Finch Report Finds 80% of Consumers Consider Sustainability, Only 6% Prioritise It

Finch has released its inaugural State of the Sustainable Consumer Report, based on a June 2026 survey of 600 US consumers conducted by Pollfish, an independent packaging analysis of 40 leading wellness brands, and broader market research. The report finds 80.5 percent of consumers say sustainability influences their purchasing decisions, but only 6.4 percent rank it as their top priority, with affordability and product performance remaining the two biggest barriers to choosing more sustainable products.

 

Why the Gap Between 80.5% and 6.4% Reveals How Consumers Weigh Sustainability Rather Than Whether They Care

 

Finch founder and CEO Lizzie Horvitz specifically framed this finding as reflecting a genuine trade-off dynamic rather than indifference, stating "consumers aren't choosing between 'sustainable' and 'not sustainable' products. They're constantly trading off environmental impact against convenience and performance, and doing so differently depending on the category." That framing matters for accurately interpreting the substantial gap between these two figures: rather than suggesting the 80.5 percent who say sustainability influences their decisions are being insincere or inconsistent, it suggests sustainability functions as one genuine factor among several competing considerations, price, performance and convenience chief among them, that consumers weigh simultaneously when making a purchasing decision, with sustainability rarely emerging as the single deciding factor once those other considerations are also taken into account.

That distinction matters considerably for how brands should interpret consumer sustainability data more broadly, since a brand relying solely on the 80.5 percent figure might overestimate how much weight sustainability positioning alone can carry at the actual point of purchase, when the 6.4 percent figure suggests price and performance considerations will typically outweigh sustainability positioning specifically in a genuine head-to-head purchasing decision for most consumers.

 

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Why the Price Ceiling Finding Constrains How Far Sustainability Positioning Can Carry a Premium

 

The report finds 62 percent of consumers say they're willing to pay more for sustainable products, but "most cap that premium at 10% or less," with the release specifically noting this "meaning brands can't market their way past the value equation." That finding establishes a concrete practical constraint on sustainability-focused product strategy: even among the majority of consumers expressing genuine willingness to pay some premium for sustainability, that willingness has a defined and relatively modest ceiling, meaning products or packaging innovations requiring cost increases substantially beyond 10 percent above conventional alternatives would likely face considerable consumer resistance regardless of how effectively that sustainability benefit is marketed or communicated.

That constraint has direct implications for the kind of packaging innovations the report separately examines, including refill systems and mono-material packaging, since these solutions need to be economically viable within that roughly 10 percent premium ceiling to gain meaningful market adoption, rather than being evaluated purely on their environmental merit independent of cost considerations.

 

Why "Existing Products Adding Claims" Distinguishes Market Repositioning From Genuine Innovation

 

The report finds sustainability-marketed CPG products captured more than 25 percent dollar share in 2025, growing nearly five times faster than conventional products, but specifically notes "much of that growth comes from existing products slapping on new sustainability claims, not genuinely new, more sustainable products entering the market." That distinction matters considerably for accurately interpreting what this rapid growth statistic actually represents: rather than reflecting a wave of genuinely new, more environmentally sound product formulations or packaging entering the market, a meaningful share of this growth appears to reflect existing, already-manufactured products simply being repositioned or relabelled with sustainability claims without necessarily changing the underlying product or packaging itself.

That finding connects to a broader pattern of greenwashing concern examined throughout ESG and sustainability marketing discourse more generally, where the volume of products carrying sustainability claims can grow considerably faster than genuine underlying environmental improvement, a distinction the report's own stated purpose, helping consumers "cut through greenwashing claims," directly addresses.

 

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Why the Single-Serve Packaging Finding Illustrates a Structural Tension in Wellness Branding

 

The report finds "more than three-quarters of premium wellness brands now sell products in single-serve formats, despite sustainability-driven positioning," noting "most rely on multi-layer flexible packaging that most curbside recycling programs can't process." That finding illustrates a genuine structural tension between two distinct consumer-facing positioning strategies that don't naturally align: single-serve formats typically appeal to convenience, portion control, and premium individual-use positioning common within wellness branding specifically, while multi-layer flexible packaging, often required to preserve product freshness and quality in smaller individual servings, tends to be considerably harder to recycle through conventional curbside programmes than simpler, single-material packaging formats.

That combination means a brand can genuinely hold sincere sustainability-oriented values and marketing positioning while its actual packaging format choices, driven by separate convenience and premium positioning considerations, work directly against straightforward recyclability, illustrating exactly the kind of disconnect Horvitz described between "positioning and real-world decision-making, where strong eco-positioning can coexist with packaging and formats that carry meaningful environmental tradeoffs."

 

Why the Packaging Leaderboard's Weighted Criteria Reveal What Constitutes Genuine Progress

 

The report's Finch Packaging Leaderboard scores 15 personal care brands against five weighted criteria: packaging design, material reduction including refill or waterless formats and verified recycled content, disposal transparency, honest labelling, and format trajectory. That multi-criteria structure, rather than a single simplified sustainability score, reflects an attempt to capture genuine, multidimensional progress rather than allowing a brand to score well based on strength in a single easily marketed dimension, such as recycled content claims alone, while potentially performing poorly on other genuinely important dimensions like disposal transparency or whether the brand's product format trajectory is moving toward or away from more resource-intensive packaging over time.