There’s a growing temptation to assume sustainability has slipped down the agenda. The signals are everywhere. Cost of living pressures are biting, households are juggling competing priorities, and businesses are navigating tighter margins alongside geopolitical and economic volatility. On the surface, it can feel like sustainability has been pushed to the side.

The latest Kantar Better Futures 2026 report produced in partnership with Sustainable Business Council tells a more nuanced, and more important, story. Sustainability hasn’t disappeared. It has matured. And with that maturity has come a much higher bar for business.

Nearly nine in ten New Zealanders still expect businesses to take responsibility for their environmental and social impacts, yet a clear majority believe businesses are not doing enough, and many find the way sustainability is communicated confusing. This is not a sign of disengagement. It is a sign of increasing scrutiny.

After years of rising awareness, people are no longer taking sustainability claims at face value. They are questioning language, looking for evidence, and paying close attention to the gap between what is said and what is actually delivered. For business leaders, this marks a shift away from sustainability as a communications exercise and towards sustainability as a credibility test.

Cost of living pressures sit firmly at the centre of people’s concerns, alongside access to healthcare, housing and broader social issues. But these pressures are not displacing sustainability. They are reframing it. People are asking more grounded, pragmatic questions. Is this making life more affordable or more expensive? Is it fair? Is it resilient? Is it genuinely reducing harm? Sustainability is no longer being judged as an abstract future good. It is being tested against the realities people are facing right now. For corporates, this is where strategies either connect in a meaningful way or start to feel disconnected from everyday life.  It also means not everything will land. The most effective organisations will be those that choose a small number of areas where they can have real impact and execute them consistently over time.

Despite the competing pressures, sustainability continues to influence behaviour in a very real way, driving both product adoption and rejection. That is a strong commercial signal. It reinforces that sustainability is not sitting on the periphery of brand or reputation. It is actively shaping demand, loyalty and risk. In practical terms, this means getting sustainability wrong now carries a direct commercial cost, not just a reputational one.

What has changed is how that influence is earned. Broad positioning and high-level commitments are no longer enough. People are responding to visible action, tangible impact and clear, honest explanations. Businesses are being judged less on what they intend to do and more on what they can demonstrate they have done.

The generational dynamics add another layer of complexity. Younger New Zealanders continue to express strong concern about sustainability issues, yet their behaviours do not always follow at the same level. This is less a contradiction and more a reflection of pressure. Financial constraints, competing priorities and a growing scepticism about whether individual action makes a difference are all shaping how younger people engage. For business, it is a reminder that values alignment alone is not enough. Sustainable choices need to be accessible, credible and clearly worth the trade-offs people are being asked to make. Strategies must be designed for real-world constraints, not idealised behaviour.

Perhaps the most telling insight is the gap between how important sustainability is viewed at board and executive level, and how well large businesses are perceived to be performing. That gap is where reputations are now being made or eroded. It is also where the opportunity sits. Expectations are not centred on perfection. They are centred on progress that feels honest, proportionate and grounded in reality. People are far less interested in what businesses say, and far more interested in what they do.

For senior leaders, the implications are immediate. Sustainability needs to be anchored in the issues people are feeling most acutely, particularly affordability, resilience and fairness. Communication needs to become clearer and more precise, cutting through complexity rather than adding to it. And there is an increasing expectation to show the workings behind decisions, including the trade-offs, the constraints and the areas that still need improvement.

What the Better Futures report ultimately highlights is that sustainability is entering a more demanding phase. The easier gains from signalling and positioning have largely been captured. What remains requires a deeper level of integration, transparency and discipline. This is a more demanding phase, but also a more valuable one.

The organisations that can demonstrate real-world impact, while staying closely connected to the lived experience of their customers and communities, will not just meet expectations. They will build trust in a way that is far more durable over time.