World Environment Day 2025: Let’s make consumption more sustainable
By Ellie Wood
To mark World Environment Day 2025, we have a blog post from Ellie Wood in our Ecosystem Analysis Team. Ellie discusses the findings of a recently published JNCC report, which explores how to define meaningful limits for environmentally sustainable consumption.
World Environment Day 2025 is all about beating plastic pollution, and the unsustainable consumption and production patterns that drive it. Or, to put it another way, “to refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rethink plastics use to build a cleaner and more sustainable future”. Plastic pollution is just one aspect of the triple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, with unsustainable consumption and production at their root. With current consumption patterns underlying so many of the major crises facing humanity, this leads us to one of the most important questions of our time: how do we make consumption more sustainable?
What is ‘sustainable’ consumption?
Maybe we need to start with a more fundamental question: what is ‘sustainable’ consumption? The sustainable consumption team at JNCC explored this question in a recent report (JNCC Report 796. Defining limits: What is ‘sustainable’ consumption?) which looked at proposed limits to consumption and associated environmental impacts. The report looked into the scientific basis of some relevant limits, such as Planetary Boundaries and Material Footprint; we found that science is necessary to ground limits in evidence and better understand the risk associated with different amounts and types of consumption. However, it’s important to acknowledge that limits are almost never based on science alone (unless there are clear ‘tipping points’ such as eutrophication at a local scale) – assumptions and value judgements also play an important role.
There are also many challenges and uncertainties associated with the science behind limits. For example, often global limits are downscaled to a per capita limit by dividing by the global population. But as the global population grows, these per capita limits quickly become out of date, and staying within them would eventually result in the global limit being exceeded.
But the science is pretty straightforward in one key area: evidence shows that a well-defined and well-accepted limit can galvanise action. For example, the widely accepted upper ‘limit’ of 1.5°C of global temperature increase to avoid the worst impacts of climate change has gained considerable traction. So, while science can’t give us all the answers about how to make consumption truly ‘sustainable’, the science is clear that setting (imperfect) limits can be effective at inspiring action. In the report we therefore make recommendations for how to apply proposed limits, such as by considering multiple impact types together to prevent unintended negative consequences, and by updating limits when new data become available (e.g. with new current or projected global population estimates).
Staying within limits
Once limits for consumption have been set, how do we stay within those limits? Our team provides evidence and advice on a range of issues, with the aim of helping to answer this question. Specifically, we focus on how to measure the impacts of consumption, interpret the data, and communicate with the right people to increase the sustainability of consumption.
Measuring consumption
One of the key tools we use for measuring consumption is the Global Environmental Impacts of Consumption (GEIC) Indicator which we codeveloped with SEI York. We publish updates to the GEIC Indicator every year as part of the annual update to the UK Biodiversity Indicators, and are constantly working to improve it. For example, last year we made recommendations for how we could add aquaculture data (the Indicator currently includes data on terrestrial – primarily agricultural – production only).
The GEIC Indicator fits within a suite of methods and tools for measuring consumption impacts. Our report on methods to compare domestic to overseas commodity production impacts recommends using Life Cycle Assessments for this purpose, which could be used alongside the Indicator to measure the impacts of consumption and guide policy related to land use, food security and importation.
Interpreting the data, looking for solutions
We also provide synthesis and analysis to help understand what the data mean in context, and identify possible solutions to unsustainable consumption and its impacts. For example, our report exploring the links between the sustainability of consumption and resource security looks at how consumption is affecting three resources vital to human safety and survival – soil health, clean air, and freshwater supply – and identifies options for improving sustainability related to each of these resources.
Our review of Circular Economy policies in principle and practice compares the current linear 'take, make, dispose' model of the current global industrialised economy with the circular economy model, which reduces the need for resource extraction and thereby has the potential to solve many problems caused by unsustainable consumption. It also gives real examples of policy interventions or actions undertaken or supported by governments in different countries to move towards a more circular economy such as Deposit Return Schemes for plastics (and other materials), which are set to be introduced in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Solutions like these could be implemented to improve sustainability and stay within defined limits.
Communicating with the right people
We work with government, researchers, NGOs, industry and others to plan our work, improve its usability and amplify its impact. And – while we spend a lot of time with our noses buried in spreadsheets and reports – we try and share what we do as widely as we can (for example by writing blog posts like the one you are reading, and this post from last year)!
But there’s a long way to go to translate what we know about the impacts of production and consumption driving the environmental crises into action – even when we know what some of the solutions might be.
Well-targeted communication is a crucial step between knowledge and action. This, again, is something we have seen play out in the global response to climate change (though, while there has been far more momentum in this area than in relation to other impacts of unsustainable consumption, we know that current action on climate change remains insufficient).
World Environment Day 2025 is about beating plastic pollution. But it’s also about communication. We know a lot about the impacts of plastic pollution, and how to stop it – as well as other consumption-driven impacts. Today is about communicating what we know to individuals, organizations, industries, and governments – all those who can make a difference. Just two months ahead of resumed negotiations on a global treaty to end plastic pollution, and in the midst of ongoing discussions around aspects of consumption such as circular economy and food, this communication is not an ‘optional extra’, but is completely vital to a more sustainable future.