77% of Britons Have Made Greener Lifestyle Changes
The ONS finds 77% of adults in Great Britain have changed their lifestyle to help the environment, and 48% of them have changed how they shop. Cost is the biggest brake: 43% of those already making changes say it stops them doing more.
01Telemetry
Key findings at a glance
- 77%of adults in Great Britain say they have made some or a lot of lifestyle changes to help tackle environmental issues
- 48%of those making changes say they have changed their shopping habits
- 54%of women making changes have changed their shopping habits
- 40%of men making changes have changed their shopping habits
- 60%of 30 to 49-year-olds making changes have changed their shopping habits
- 43%of those making changes say cost is a barrier to doing more
- 37%of those making changes say large polluters should change before individuals
- 26%of those making changes say they do not know what more they could do
- 9%of those making changes say eco-friendly alternatives are not as good
- 60%of adults see climate change and the environment as an important issue facing the UK
- 85%of adults say climate change affected them in at least one way in the past 12 months
- 41%of UK businesses are concerned about the impact climate change may have on them
02Scope
What the report covers
The Office for National Statistics published Public opinions and social trends, Great Britain: attitudes to climate change and environmental issues, September 2026 on 16 October 2026, ahead of the UN biodiversity conference (COP17) in October and the UN climate conference (COP31) in November. It pools three monthly waves of the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, run between 1 July and 27 September 2026, for a responding sample of 10,680 adults, and adds business figures from the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS).
60% of adults named climate change and the environment as an important issue facing the UK, rising to 69% of degree holders and 67% of Londoners. 85% said climate change had affected them in at least one way in the past 12 months, up from 74% in autumn 2025 and 66% in October 2024, with heatwaves the most common way (78%). 77% said they had made some or a lot of lifestyle changes. Among them, the most common actions were waste reduction (80%), shopping habits (48%), diet (42%) and travel (41%). The accompanying dataset shows the shopping change is far from even: 54% of women making changes have altered how they shop against 40% of men, and the share peaks at 60% among 30 to 49-year-olds before falling to 29% among the over-70s.
Asked what stops them doing more, those already making changes most often said it is too expensive (43%), that large polluters should change before individuals (37%), that they do not know what more they could do (26%) and that there are not enough incentives (24%). On the business side, 41% of firms said between 21 September and 4 October 2026 that they were concerned about climate change, up from 25% a year earlier, yet 61% had taken none of the environmental actions listed and only 3% had a climate change strategy. One figure deserves care: when the ONS asked the same lifestyle question between 3 September and 26 October 2025, 84% said they had made changes. The bulletin does not compare the two waves and the collection windows differ, so read the lower 2026 figure as a pointer rather than a measured fall.
03Briefing
What this means for UK marketers
Greener shopping is a mainstream behaviour, not a niche. Nearly half of the adults making environmental changes have changed how they shop, rising to 60% of 30 to 49-year-olds and 54% of women. If your product has a real environmental advantage, show it where the buying decision happens: the product page, the comparison table and the ad copy, not a sustainability page nobody visits.
Price is the objection to answer first. 43% of those making changes say cost holds them back, at a time when many households are still trimming spending, as our report on Britons cutting back on non-essentials showed from the same survey earlier this year. Lead with cost in use (durability, refills, repairs, lower bills) rather than asking people to pay a premium for a green label.
Expect scrutiny. 37% think large polluters should act before individuals, and only 3% of businesses have a climate strategy, so shoppers are looking for proof. The CMA's Green Claims Code checklist says a claim needs up-to-date, credible evidence, and that broad terms such as eco-friendly or sustainable must reflect the whole life cycle of the product or business. Since April 2025 the CMA can also decide breaches of consumer law itself and fine businesses without going to court, as its guidance on green claims across the supply chain explains. Specific, evidenced claims beat vague adjectives on both trust and legal risk.
There is a content gap too. 26% of people already making changes do not know what more they could do. Practical guides on repair, care, recycling and running costs answer real questions and give search engines something useful to rank.
For installers, the demand is measurable: among those making changes, 30% have made energy efficiency changes to their home, 10% have improved insulation and 4% have installed solar panels. With cost the top barrier, the website has to show eligibility, accreditation and honest running costs early, which is how we approach web design for insulation, retrofit and low-carbon companies and the wider digital marketing plan for renewable energy firms. One caution: fieldwork ran through what the Met Office provisionally declared the UK's hottest summer on record, so plan around the trend rather than a single wave's peak.
04Method
How they got the data
Check the method before you quote the number.
The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey is a monthly ONS survey of adults aged 16 and over in Great Britain, the same survey behind our report on public attitudes to AI. In the latest wave (2 to 27 September 2026) the ONS sampled 8,730 households, drawn at random from people who had previously completed the Transformed Labour Force Survey or the OPN, and 3,640 people responded, a 42% response rate. This bulletin pools the July, August and September 2026 waves for a responding sample of 10,680. Results are weighted to population estimates, every estimate carries a confidence interval in the datasets, and figures are individually rounded. Full design details are in the OPN quality and methodology information.
The questions on actions taken and barriers were asked only of people who said they had made changes (a base of about 8,270 respondents), so figures such as the 48% and 43% are shares of that group, not of all adults. The age and sex breakdowns come from the ONS dataset on public attitudes to the environment by personal characteristics, which also holds the 2024 and 2025 editions. Climate change was not defined for respondents. The business figures come from BICS, fielded between 21 September and 4 October 2026. The ONS notes that the July to September fieldwork coincided with heatwaves, which may have shaped how people perceived and experienced climate change.
