Picture this: you’re at a supermarket, tired after a long shift, and you’re choosing between the cheaper conventional chicken and the certified sustainable option that costs 30% more. You know which one is better for the planet. You also know which one fits your budget. For most people, that choice is not really a choice at all. This tension sits at the heart of one of sustainability’s most uncomfortable truths. The cost of living crisis isn’t just hurting household finances. It is actively reversing progress on sustainable consumption.

What “Sustainable Choices” Actually Means, and Who Gets to Make Them

Sustainable choices broadly refers to decisions that reduce environmental and social harm. This could mean buying organic or locally grown food, choosing energy-efficient appliances, taking public transport, purchasing secondhand clothing, or paying a premium for products certified as ethically made. 

In theory, these choices exist on a spectrum—some free, some costly. In practice, the ones that tend to make the most measurable difference often carry what economists call a green premium: the extra cost of choosing the environmentally responsible option over the conventional one. In 2024, consumers paid on average 26.6% more for eco-friendly products compared to conventional equivalents.

This reflects not a new problem, but a pattern with deep roots. Climate change is a class issue, and so is sustainability. In the Global South, where about 85% of the world’s population lives, countries that were historically colonized and are now still resource-stripped are being asked to leapfrog into sustainable development, often without the financial infrastructure or political support to do so. 

The cost of living crisis is now pulling this dynamic into sharper relief. So far, sustainable living has largely been designed for and marketed to upper- and middle-class communities. This conundrum, now for people in wealthier countries as well, makes visible a structural problem that communities in the Global South have always navigated.

The Cost of Living Crisis, by the Numbers

The data tells a precise story. Between 2019 and 2025, the share of consumers willing to pay more for locally or ethically sourced products fell by an estimated 34%. Within the next year, the share of consumers willing to pay more for sustainable products dropped from 58% to 55%. The steepest declines occurred in Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe. 

Bain’s 2025 Consumer Lab attributes the softening directly to the cost of living crisis. It notes that, increasingly, sustainability must compete for headspace against more immediate financial anxieties. Even more telling: Deloitte’s tracking found that between late 2021 and 2022, as inflation hit, fewer consumers across multiple countries made sustainable purchases month on month, with cost cited as the leading driver every time.

Saving Sustainably 

At the same, a paradox blooms. Some cost of living pressures are accidentally pushing people toward certain sustainable behaviors: buying secondhand to save money, repairing electronics instead of buying new, reducing food waste out of necessity, and cooking more from leftovers. But these are the margins. These are things people have always done out of necessity, way before the boom of “sustainable lifestyle”. 

Meanwhile, the bigger-ticket, higher-impact choices are out in the cold. Things like switching energy suppliers, constantly buying sustainably sourced goods, or choosing certified ethical products, are the ones being cut first when budgets tighten.

What makes this particularly complex is the intersectionality at play. Low-income communities are simultaneously the least responsible for environmental degradation and the most exposed to its consequences, from climate hazards to poor air quality to food insecurity. They are also the ones who have it the hardest when the cost of living crisis hits.

As GlobeScan’s Societal Shift 2025 report found, the Global South consistently shows the highest concern and readiness to act on climate change. Yet, they face the greatest financial barriers to doing so. Asking those communities to also bear the cost of sustainable consumption, without systemic support, is not a solution. It is a transfer of responsibility from the institutions and corporations that have historically shaped the problem—and still do—onto the individuals least equipped to fix it.

The Price of Choosing

For a lot of people, none of this is abstract. Green Network Asia spoke with an international university student in Moka, Mauritius. She is currently navigating exactly this tension on a student budget. She said, “The price gap between regular and sustainable groceries is significant enough that, as someone focused on getting through the month rather than optimizing for the planet, the cheaper option usually wins by default.” 

It is the same story with clothing. When sustainable pieces cost more, she buys fewer of them, and fewer clothes overall. She instead opts for wearing what she owns until they are worn out. It’s not framed as an environmental strategy, but it functions as one.

She continued, “I still feel guilt over choosing the cheaper option. But why should the guilt land on me when the underlying constraint was never really a choice?” 

Her read on the bigger picture was blunt: “Sustainable living is expensive because sourcing it responsibly costs money, and the responsibility for fixing that shouldn’t rest on individuals, or on governments/companies alone.” 

“It’s both,” she said, “working in tandem, not one substituting for the other.”

Rethinking the System

Sustainable lifestyle advocacy is not about guilting individuals into spending more on green products they cannot afford. It is to restructure the systems to make sustainability the cheaper, easier, and more accessible option. 

That means governments subsidizing sustainable goods the way they have historically subsidized fossil fuels. It also means addressing overconsumption at the production level rather than solely leaving it to consumer choice. It also means recognizing, as Doughnut Economics argues, that an economy built on endless growth will always price out the people at the bottom. 

Ultimately, the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis share the same root causes. They reek of extractive systems that concentrate wealth at the top while distributing risk downward. Hence, there is no fixing one without addressing the other. When the path forward is holistic, intersectional, and equitable, that is when sustainable development progresses beyond rebranding.

Editor: Nazalea Kusuma

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