Danish supermarket pioneers climate-friendly shopping with ‚Climate Journey‘ Lab, resulting in a 14% CO2 reduction within 6 months.
What unsustainable behavior needs to change:
On average, a single grocery store emits CO2 equivalents of 635 passenger cars annually. With over 60,000 supermarkets in the United States alone, the retail market plays a significant role in reducing global emissions. To mitigate this impact, it’s imperative to steer shoppers towards more climate-friendly choices.
People are creatures of habit and tend to stick with familiar routines, like walking the same aisles in the supermarket, or grabbing the usual products, regardless if they’re environmentally friendly or not. This habitual behaviour makes it challenging to adopt sustainable shopping practices, as individuals may resist change, or see eco-friendly alternatives as inconvenient. To break these routines, adding some friction can help people to stop, think, and reconsider their choices.
The Green Nudge:
As one of the biggest Nordic retailers, Coop launched a climate lab in 2022 called ‚Klima Kvickly‚ at one of their Aarhus, Denmark locations. This store serves as a testing ground for how a climate-neutral supermarket can operate. Here they tested 93 in-store nudges to guide customers toward climate-friendly grocery shopping.
The store features numerous climate-related information: such as seasonality for fruits and vegetables, the climate impact of product transport, cultivation, and preparation, and which meats have higher environmental impacts. By creating a unified visual language with vibrant cues and subtle nudges, they made customers attentive to this communication, disrupted shopping routines, sparked curiosity in sustainable products; ultimately resulting in more environmentally conscious choices.
The result: This innovative climate-store approach effectively directed shoppers toward eco-friendly choices, encouraging „more greens and less red meat.“ Additionally, sales within the entire fruits and vegetable category increased by 69%, and customer perception of climate-friendly choices soared from 7% to 65%. Coop reduced CO2 emissions by 14%, achieving their 2030 climate goals in just six months.
Apart from the climate-related benefits, the introduction of the green interventions resulted in a 123% revenue increase, making the test store the best performing Coop supermarket in Denmark. This underscores how climate-friendly practices, when implemented right, can enhance profitability and demonstrate that sustainability is a viable business strategy.
Are you aware of any other nudges that help to promote more sustainable choices? Feel free to get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com
From behavioural design expert Sille Krukow at Krukow. As a leading Nudge and Behavior Design consultancy, Krukow is dedicated to measurable change. They create tailored strategies using design thinking, psychology, and nudging to make the right decisions easy in areas such as sales, performance, circularity, sustainability, and safety.
A brief message after selecting a plant-based lunch nudges meal kit customers to choose less meat at dinner.