Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption

What Is the Greendex?

You've read the news—everyone wants to be green now. But do you really know how your personal choices are adding up? What about the choices of your fellow citizens? How well are people around the globe adopting behaviors that can make the world a more environmentally sustainable place?

National Geographic and the international polling firm GlobeScan have just conducted a study measuring and monitoring consumer progress toward environmentally sustainable consumption in 14 countries around the world.

Why? We wanted to give people a better idea of how consumers in different countries are doing in taking action to preserve our planet by tracking, reporting, and promoting environmentally sustainable consumption and citizen behavior.

This quantitative consumer study of 14,000 consumers in a total of 14 countries asked about such behavior as energy use and conservation, transportation choices, food sources, the relative use of green products versus traditional products, attitudes towards the environment and sustainability, and knowledge of environmental issues. A group of international experts helped us determine the behaviors that were most critical to investigate.

The result: the National Geographic/GlobeScan "Consumer Greendex," a scientifically derived sustainable consumption index of actual consumer behavior and material lifestyles across 14 countries. The Greendex will be tracked over time and will be comparable across the selection of countries representing both the developed and developing world.

To provide context for the Greendex results, we developed a "Market Basket," an index of actual consumption in four areas important to environmentally sustainable behavior—energy, transportation, travel, and consumer goods. A Market Basket for each country was assembled using a set of independently collected macroeconomic indicators, gathered by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which mirror, in part, the consumer behavior measured by the Greendex survey. The purpose of the Market Basket is to provide an external estimate of the results of changes in consumer behavior over time. The Greendex, for example, measures things consumers are doing to save energy in a country; the Market Basket measures whether total energy consumption in the country is actually going up or down. The Market Basket will also establish a framework for comparing the relative environmental impact of each country's size and rate of growth, over time.

Next steps on this website:

Overall Results

Unlike other measures that rank countries according to the environmental performance of their governments, companies and other factors, the Greendex is the first to rank the performance of individual consumers, rather than countries as a whole.

Consumption as measured by the Greendex is determined both by the choices consumers actively make—such as repairing rather than replacing items, using cold water to wash laundry, choosing green products rather than environmentally unfriendly ones—and choices that are controlled more by their circumstances, such as the climate they live in or the availability of green products or public transport. The initiative considered both these factors, with 60 percent of the 65-variable index based on choice or discretionary behavior.

The findings show that consumers in Brazil and India tie for the highest Greendex score for environmentally sustainable consumption at 60 points each. They are followed by consumers in China (56.1), Mexico (54.3), Hungary (53.2) and Russia (52.4). Among consumers in wealthy countries, those in Great Britain, Germany and Australia each have a Greendex score of 50.2, those in Spain register a score of 50.0 and Japanese respondents 49.1. U.S. consumers have the lowest Greendex score at 44.9. The other lowest-scoring consumers are Canadians with 48.5 and the French with 48.7.

There are signs that index rankings are set to change as people in developing countries become more economically successful and adopt more consumptive behaviors. Findings show that consumers in countries with emerging economies aspire to higher material standards of living and believe people in all countries should have the same living standards as those in the wealthiest countries.

Consumers in developing countries feel more responsible for environmental problems than those in developed countries, and six in 10 people in developing countries report that environmental problems are negatively affecting their health-twice as many as in most developed countries. Moreover, consumers in developing countries feel strongest that global warming will worsen their way of life in their lifetime, are the most engaged when it comes to talking and listening about the environment, feel the most guilt about their environmental impact and are willing to do the most to minimize that impact. Their behavior reflects their concern. People in developing countries are more likely to:

Live in smaller residences

Prefer green products and own relatively few appliances or expensive electronic devices

Walk, cycle, or use public transportation, and choose to live close to their most common destination

By contrast, consumers in developed countries, who have more environmentally friendly options to choose from, often don't make those choices.

They have larger homes and are more likely to have air-conditioning.

They generally own more cars, drive alone most frequently and use public transport infrequently.

They are least likely to buy environmentally friendly products and to avoid environmentally unfriendly products.

U.S. consumers scored worse than those in any other country, developing or developed, on housing, transportation and goods. They are by far the least likely to use public transportation, to walk or bike to their destinations or to eat locally grown foods. They have among the largest average residence size in the survey. Only 15 percent say they minimize their use of fresh water.