Why sustainable products fail—and what actually gets people to use them

FastCompany: Here’s a story you’re probably familiar with: You buy the reusable coffee cup. It’s beautiful, ethical, made from recycled ocean plastic, and you feel good about your purchase. But then it leaks in your bag, ruins a notebook, and by week two it’s sitting in a cabinet while you’re back to disposable cups and a vague sense of guilt. Or maybe it’s the “eco mode” on your washing machine that takes three hours instead of one. The sustainable packaging that requires scissors, sweat, and a YouTube tutorial. The electric vehicle charging app with six steps when a gas pump has one. We’ve all been there.

But here’s what’s interesting: The problem isn’t that you don’t care about sustainability. It’s that these products are designed as if caring should be enough. And the problem for businesses with this approach is that it’s not. The Big Misunderstanding: Care vs. Use There’s a gap that kills sustainable products, and it’s not about values. It’s about friction. In our research, we have examined hundreds of companies across many industries and found the same pattern: Products fail when they ask people to care more. They succeed when they ask people to do less. The difference seems subtle but it’s not. Caring is an intention.

Using is a behavior. And between intention and behavior sits everything that makes us human: cognitive load, time pressure, habits, trade-offs, the path of least resistance. People don’t usually buy products to express values. They buy them first to solve problems with the least effort possible. When you add steps, costs, or complexity in the name of sustainability, you’re competing with convenience. And in this battle, convenience almost always wins. The question shouldn’t be, How do we get people to care more? Rather, it should be How do we design sustainability that works because it’s easier, not despite being harder?

Three ways sustainability shows up in design When you map how sustainability actually intersects with product experience, you see three outcomes. Sustainability that’s neutral. It doesn’t help or hurt the core value proposition. Maybe it’s a recycled component the user never notices. It doesn’t drive adoption, but it doesn’t kill it either. Sustainability that adds friction. Extra steps. Higher up-front cost. Performance trade-offs. Packaging that’s harder to open. This is where good intentions go to die. Sustainability that improves the experience. Lower lifetime cost. Fewer decisions. Better performance. Less maintenance.

This is where adoption happens, and it’s rarer than it should be. That third category is where things get interesting. What it looks like when sustainability makes things better Take Electrolux. A few years ago, the company redesigned its washing machines with a specific goal: Make clothes last longer. Not “wash greener” or “use less water,” but simply “make clothes last longer.” The machines became gentler on fabrics. Garments held their shape, color, and overall integrity through more wash cycles. For consumers, that meant real money saved over time, and fewer worn clothes that needed replacing.

To be sure, energy and water use dropped too. Textile waste fell. Microplastic shedding from synthetic fabrics declined. But here’s the key: Customers didn’t adopt a sustainability feature. They adopted a better washing machine—one that made their lives easier and saved them money. The environmental benefits were an extra. Or consider John Deere, which shifted from selling machines to selling productivity . Using GPS, sensors, and software, farmers can now optimize exactly where and when to plant, spray, and harvest. The result? They use significantly less fuel and fewer chemicals while improving yields. Operating costs fall.

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The article addresses a significant challenge in the brand strategy industry regarding sustainable products, offering actionable insights that are highly relevant to professionals in the field.