More with Less: Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency

This report focuses on how consumption can be made more sustainable through decoupling growth from environmental impact at the scale and speed required. It builds on four years of engagement by the World Economic Forum with leading businesses around the issue of sustainable consumption. Through this engagement with chief executive officers, business leaders and experts, the report aims to answer six key questions:

• What are the key trends in sustainable consumption?
• What is the size of the opportunity for countries, companies and consumers?
• What are the barriers to scaling existing models of sustainable consumption?
• What does getting to scale look like?
• What new solutions are needed to get to scale in sustainable consumption?
• How can we achieve scale by working collectively and creating action on new fronts?

A systems view of sustainable consumption has been taken throughout the report. Rather than focusing just on the demand side, the discussions that informed this work have taken the lens of consumer engagement (demand), value chains and upstream action (supply) and the policies and enabling environment to accelerate change (rules of the game). However, in this report the narrative always begins with demand as the consumer and customer are at the heart of sustainable consumption.