I started studying sustainable consumption about two years ago. In terms of academic research, it was something of a leap in the dark. During my Ph.D. I had focused on other topics which, for all their merits, certainly lacked the urgency of environmental sustainability. They didn't have that sense of emergency, if you like.
However, I always thought of myself as someone with a strong sense of civic duty. And having a sense of civic duty (along with a firm grip on reality) means caring about the issues that climate change keeps putting right under our noses. On top of that, I'm a Millennial, and as such I have social media accounts galore. It's not unusual for me to come across carousels full of countdowns to Earth Overshoot Day, data on the overexploitation of resources, and so on. So much so that, at some point, I started taking them for granted. Perhaps it was the desensitisation that leaves us blind and deaf to the disasters unfolding around us. To borrow the quote made famous by the Twitter account @PerthshireMags, and that has gone viral in recent years: "Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it".
That acknowledged, I have always tried to "be the most sustainable version of myself". I own a collection of twenty tote bags, picked up in museums, at flea markets and from merch stands at concerts, and I take one with me every time I leave the house so I never need a plastic bag. I buy seasonal food and, when the pace of my days allows, I shop at a local market. I sort my rubbish as best I can. I buy cruelty-free cosmetics and, whenever possible, refills, so I'm not adding more packaging that will biodegrade long after I'm gone. I eat little red meat and tend not to buy it, because I'm well aware of the toll intensive farming takes on the planet.
Then I started working with Alessandro M. Peluso, an expert in sustainable consumption, and realised I had only seen the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Once I began studying environmental sustainability and immersing myself in the literature, I understood something about us humans. Because of the hierarchy of priorities we build, very "humanly", to bring discipline to our lives, we place environmental sustainability on one of the lowest rungs, partly because initiatives promoted by governments and other stakeholders are very "easy" to fit into our lives as citizens. But easy, often, does not mean effective. And, above all, effective does not mean sacrifice-free.
That is the main reason why Alessandro and I wrote Inside the Green Mind, published by Palgrave Macmillan in May 2026. A book certainly lets you explore a topic in depth and engage with the literature more thoroughly, since it's a flexible, accessible format that adapts to the writers. But if that is the "editorial" reason, the book's real raison d'être is to make tangible the urgency of bringing genuinely effective sustainable consumption practices into our everyday lives. Those lives are often at the mercy of the unexpected, of rush and anxiety, and of the priority rankings that desensitise and blind us to the emergency of the climate crisis.
Our motivation to act came from reading investigations, news reports and first-hand accounts from people hit by environmental disasters. One figure stands out. UNHCR describes climate refugees as those forced to leave their homes because of the increasing frequency and intensity of sudden climate-related disasters such as famines, droughts, floods and other extreme events. Climate-driven displacement is so pressing that estimates suggest between 200 and 216 million people could be on the move by 2050 (Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration, 2021). It is an emergency that has yet to be matched by concrete action, at supranational level or, still less, at individual level. This is despite the fact that more and more people say they feel emotionally affected by the climate crisis, fuelling a rise in the distress now labelled "eco-anxiety" (Brophy et al., 2023).
An extensive review of the literature showed us that the individual barriers to sustainable consumption go far beyond the now well-known attitude–behaviour gap, the tendency we might sum up as “not practising what we preach”. Some people simply can't afford to consume sustainably: installing solar panels at home, for instance, requires a considerable upfront investment. Others give reasons that are more social in nature and fear being left out because their peer groups take a more relaxed approach to consumption. Some feel trapped by their habits and routines and don't know how to change them. Above all, some simply describe themselves as "lazy". They lack any incentive, other than purely financial ones, to move towards a green transition.
We saw these and other barriers confirmed once we started talking to consumers and to a pool of sustainability experts. Their voices, in turn, voiced issues that are typically downplayed in the literature but carry real weight in people's actual lives. Yet from these same informants we also drew a measure of hope. The literature already lists a range of drivers that can motivate sustainable consumption: financial incentives (a classic, if short-lived in its effect), social visibility and recognition, learning by doing. What came through in our interviewees' words was a drive towards optimism, at times not entirely rational. They were trying to weave into everyday life sustainable practices that can make a difference once they become collective, with an eye (open, and sometimes guilty) to the wellbeing of future generations.
To bring the issues raised in the literature and by our informants more clearly into view, we then ran a survey on a representative sample of the Italian population. We focused on Italy not only because, being Italian, we know it well, but above all because Italy has long danced along a peculiar tension. On one side is the push towards green, driven mainly by companies with a history of investing in product and process innovation. On the other is the lure of the status quo: an attachment to a traditional, perhaps stereotyped image of the Belpaese as agricultural and devoted to beauty. From the data, we derived what is perhaps the output we're proudest of: an impact × sacrifice matrix. It shows that many of the actions now built into our daily routines have a negligible effect on reducing CO₂ emissions. Many actions perceived as more "sacrificial", whether in terms of personal identity, cost or disrupted routines, can instead make substantial difference.
Our book set out to do something deceptively simple: to help people tell the difference between what makes us feel sustainable and what actually makes a difference. The matrix sorts everyday behaviours into four groups. "Symbolic sustainers" are low in impact and sacrifice: switching off the lights, saying no to plastic straws, choosing products with less packaging. "Hard sells" ask a lot of us and give back little. "Low-hanging fruits" are high in impact and surprisingly painless, such as walking, cycling, or taking public transport where it works. Finally, "System shifters" include giving up the car, flying less, retrofitting our homes and moving towards a plant-based diet, behaviours that move the needle, the ones we most readily talk ourselves out of.
Writing the book changed the way I look at my own routine. My tote bags are still there, and I'm still fond of them. But I've stopped treating them as proof of anything. I now see them as “Symbolic sustainers” in the purest sense: they keep sustainability on my mind, but they are not where the real work lies. If there is one thing I hope readers take away, it isn't guilt. As our informants taught us, guilt paralyses rather than mobilises. What I hope for is a change of question. Instead of "am I doing enough small things?", I'd like readers to ask "which of the big things could I start working towards?" System shifters are journeys, made easier by good infrastructure, fair incentives and the simple reassurance that we are not the only ones making them.
That is also where our thinking goes next. The behaviours that matter most are, paradoxically, the ones research knows least about, precisely because they are hard to study and even harder to change. How do we make giving up the car feel ordinary rather than heroic? How do we reframe a plant-based diet as a return to the roots of the Mediterranean diet, rather than a betrayal of our countries' food culture? We don't have all the answers yet. We know the destination; what we're still mapping is the route. To go back to that viral line: the footage is getting closer. The question is whether we'll keep filming or put the phone down and start walking.