Dispatches from London: Turning climate concern into climate action

“The path to humans’ progress is a green path. The path to economic prosperity is a green path, and the path to social justice and racial justice is a green path.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan shared his vision of a sustainable future at Mastercard’s welcome reception during London Climate Action Week, the annual event drawing activists, community organizations and sustainability leaders from the public and private sector. Drawing on the insights from the conversations held at Mastercard’s welcome reception, series of “Please mind the say/do gap” panels and “Rethinking rewards” workshop, here are eight ways to inspire, inform and enable more sustainable consumption choices and move closer, faster to that sustainable future.

01
Inaction often stems from people not believing their actions will have an impact ...

People want to make sustainable changes, panelists emphasized, but they’re often held back from action by a host of reasons, whether it’s a lack of education on how to go about it or the feeling that getting started will be too difficult. One of the biggest hindrances for people taking climate action is not believing their individual actions will make any difference.

This is where tools like Mastercard’s Carbon Calculator, powered by Doconomy, can help inform people about the impact their purchasing decisions make. “When we have relevant data at our fingertips,” said Rachel Bale, senior vice president of ESG Products at Mastercard, “we can realize the power of our purchases and make more conscious choices.” 

02
... But small changes adopted by many can have a huge effect. 

As an individual, it’s easy to feel like something as simple as switching from meat to a plant-based lunch isn’t going to make a noticeable impact, despite its demonstrated lower carbon impact. But when businesses offer these options, they’re offering it to all of their consumers — meaning that veggie burger can easily become a collective action with real results.

Karen Pflug, chief sustainability officer at Ingka Group, IKEA’s parent company, detailed the company’s use of this strategy during Mastercard’s panel on inspiring, informing and enabling consumers to make more sustainable choices. “By 2025, we want 50% of the meals offered in our restaurants to be plant-based,” Pflug said. “We have over 600 million people eat our food every year, so the way we have nudged consumers is to make the plant-based meal option not only tasty and healthy but also a lower price than the meat-based alternative.”

03
Consumers want actions that are easy to integrate into their lives.

In order to change behaviors, organizations need to provide sustainable options that don’t disrupt the flow of consumers’ lives. “About 60% of us are already buying second hand, but only 30% of us are selling second hand,” said Zoe Rowswell, co-founder and CEO of TernEco, at the same panel. “So there’s a big gap between supply and demand, and you see that across the board in other models … To change behaviors, what we need are really easy solutions that allow us to feel good about what we do.”

Ellen Jackowski, chief sustainability officer at Mastercard, added that the company is applying that same logic to the urban mobility space: “We’re helping to encourage people to take public transit by taking the friction out of that experience… In many cities including London, you can just tap your Mastercard and enter the subway; you can tap your Mastercard and get on a bus. It's easy, and we should all be doing it.”

04
Working at the local level is imperative.

By connecting with neighborhood associations, schools, Main Street businesses and community groups, you can have immediately and tangible impact, said Wayne Hubbard, CEO of ReLondon, a partnership of the Mayor of London and the London boroughs to improve waste and resource management, in a fireside chat about sustainable cities.

He cited a project undertaken by some schools in London where students set up and managed a “refill shop” where their parents can come to refill cleaning products, reusing the plastic containers. “It’s teaching them how to live sustainably, and also teaching them entrepreneurial skills. The kids are learning great stuff, the parents are using less plastic, and they’re helping their kids educate themselves and be more entrepreneurial,” he said.

05
Businesses can incentivize people to explore different models of exchange.

Mastercard’s Sustainability Innovation Labs hosted the “Rethinking Rewards” workshop, exploring how to create the rewards systems and data flows for inspiring, informing and enabling sustainable consumption of everyday products.

In a typical rewards system, you get points for your purchases, including any type of product, which you can redeem by spending on more products, services and experiences. Workshop participants discussed how in building a sustainable rewards ecosystem, businesses can incentivize people to explore lower-impact products and models of exchange, like resale marketplaces, or companies’ circular buy-back programs for their products.  

06
Businesses can also provide integrated ways for people to contribute to climate solutions.

What if for every Mastercard gift card you purchased, a tree was planted to restore the world’s forests? What if the same thing happened when you purchased a stay at a hotel, or a select product in a store? These types of integrations are being innovated by partners of the Priceless Planet Coalition, a group run in partnership with Conservation International, World Resources Institute, and Mastercard to unite the efforts of businesses and individuals to restore 100 million trees across six continents n places that have significant potential for impact on climate, communities, and biodiversity.

Funding nature-based climate solutions like forest restoration can be an impactful climate action for businesses and consumers to take together, said Jamie Cross, the vice president for brand partnerships at Conservation International. By combining businesses’ resources with a large number of consumers’ purchases and engagements, funding for these important projects can reach, she said, “transformative scale.”

07
Sustainability and inclusion go hand-in-hand.

Improving access to public transit, for example, is not only a win for the environment but also for the people currently living without easy and affordable ways to get where they need to go.

“Low-income communities are often located quite a distance from transit arteries,” said Mastercard’s Chapin Flynn, senior vice president and global head of urban mobility, “so what that means is, the folks who are most in need of health care, employment and education have the least access to it. We need to break down those barriers and make sure that everyone, regardless of their economic status, has equal access to urban mobility options.”

08
We all need to speak up about our climate concerns. 

No one can operate successfully in a vacuum, and one big barrier to individual climate action is the feeling that one is alone in their concerns.

Many people are intimidated by climate activism, said Katie Cross, founder of Pledgeball, an organization joining sports fans across the world in pledging to take action, because they feel “that it’s not part of their identity, and that you have to be an activist to do it – there’s a gap.”

If people can see that their friends and neighbors share their attitudes toward sustainability and climate action, they’ll feel more comfortable taking their first step. “When people realize that others around them care,” Cross said, “they are more empowered to take action.”