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? How have they changed over the past year?

National Geographic and the international polling firm GlobeScan have just conducted their second annual study measuring and monitoring consumer progress toward environmentally sustainable consumption in 17 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 17,000 consumers in a total of 17 countries (14 in 2008) 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 second annual National Geographic/GlobeScan "Consumer Greendex," a scientifically derived sustainable consumption index of actual consumer behavior and material lifestyles across 17 countries. The Greendex will continue to 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.

Overall Results

In this second annual survey to measure and monitor consumer behaviors that have an impact on the environment, National Geographic and the international polling firm GlobeScan have found an increase in environmentally friendly consumer behavior in 13 of the 14 countries that were surveyed in both 2008 and 2009. This year's survey added consumers from three countries, for a total of 17.

Findings from the inaugural Greendex survey in 2008 raised concerns about what economic development and the material aspirations that come with it would mean for the impact that the average consumer in rapidly developing countries has on the environment. At the same time, the results reminded us that consumers in wealthy countries have a proportionately greater impact on the environment than others—and that they can and should make more sustainable choices.

The world has changed since January 2008. Following what was an extremely volatile year by many measures, National Geographic replicated its Greendex survey in January 2009. How has consumer behavior changed from one year ago? And if it has changed, why? What direction are we headed in terms of the environment?

As seen last year, the top-scoring consumers of 2009 are in the developing economies of India, Brazil and China. Argentina and South Korea, both new additions to the survey, are virtually tied for fourth, followed by Mexicans, Hungarians and Russians. Ranks ninth through thirteenth, the latter a three-way tie, are all occupied by Europeans, as well as Australians in twelfth. Japanese, U.S. and Canadian consumers again score lowest.

Survey results suggest that both cost considerations and environmental concerns may have motivated consumers to adopt more environmentally sustainable behavior over the past year, hence the general increase in Greendex scores. The 2009 Greendex survey has identified a number of types of environmentally friendly behavior that have become more common, and many of these result in cost savings for consumers. For example, consumers in 11 of the 14 countries surveyed in 2008 and 2009 are more likely this year to report that they keep their heating and cooling settings in their households lower to save energy. The practice of washing laundry in cold water rather than hot to save energy has also become more widespread in nine countries surveyed in both years. Preference for buying second-hand rather than new household items has become more widespread, as has as the preference for repairing broken items to extend their useful lives.

Overall, Greendex scores are up from 2008, which is good news. Many will ask the question, however, whether this is not due to the economic downturn alone? The answer to that question has to be no. Clearly, economic conditions have reined in consumption levels, and that is reflected in the increased Greendex scores. At the same time, however, environmental concerns have remained strong, and awareness of the issues at hand has increased. Consumers have been alerted to what they can do easily, and with cost savings as the needed incentive, they have made choices to do so more than they did during 2008.

The message to those that supply the products and services that they consume, and to those that make the rules about how they behave, is a clear one: Make the right thing, provide the right opportunities, and consumers will do the right thing.