World Consumer Rights Day 2025: A Just Transition to Sustainable Living
The past decade has been the warmest on record, and extreme weather has become routine in many nations, disrupting lives and livelihoods. At the same time, biodiversity loss and pollution are posing a growing threat to planetary and human health. It is increasingly clear that the impact of these crises is not just environmental, but economic and social too and is undermining progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
To remain within planetary boundaries, we will need to make fundamental changes to the way we eat, how we travel, how we heat, cool, and power our homes, and the products and services we buy and use. Yet it is essential that sustainable and healthy choices for consumers are made more available, accessible, and affordable. And that this transition is not at the expense of people’s basic rights and needs, but is instead an opportunity for advancement, delivering sustainable living for people as well as planet.
For World Consumer Rights Day 2025 on 15 March, Consumers International, together with its Members and partners, will unite in a global call for A just transition to sustainable living. Together we will demand greater protection and empowerment for consumers in support of the dramatic turnaround we need to achieve global goals.
Our Shared Challenge
The vital importance of sustainable consumption is widely recognised. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that action on consumption or ‘demand-side strategies’ could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40-70% in key sectors by 2050. Similarly, ‘enabling sustainable consumption’ is one of the key targets established by the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework.
It is also clear that without urgent action to protect our environment, many of the most serious challenges facing consumers will escalate substantially. Our failing food systems and dependence on fossil fuels have contributed significantly to rising food and energy prices around the world, while environmental pollution (including air, chemical, and plastic pollution) is already responsible for at least 9 million premature deaths each year.
There is significant public support for action. In a report published with GlobeScan and with data from 30,000 consumers across 31 countries, we found that 94% supported a shift to more sustainable living. Yet consumers face significant barriers to taking action. Our research showed that over 80% said they need stronger support from governments, businesses, and international organisations to make sustainable living more available, accessible, and affordable. Costs of living rises over the past five years has made it increasingly difficult for many to afford basic necessities, leaving little room for discretionary spending or lifestyle changes that require additional costs.
It is essential that we act now to deliver sustainable living – meeting people’s rights and needs without exceeding planetary boundaries.
We will call for a just transition to sustainable living that
- Upholds the legitimate needs of consumers. The includes access to essential needs such as food and energy, and the protection of people’s health and safety.
- Makes sustainable and healthy choices more available, accessible, and affordable for all, rather than placing the onus of responsibility on individual consumers.
- Ensures consumer voices are heard at all levels of governance, as well as by businesses, with a focus on including and protecting vulnerable and low-income consumers.
- Recognises that pathways to sustainable living vary across contexts, what works in one setting may not be feasible or relevant in another, as local priorities and challenges shape unique approaches.
Our campaign will focus on sustainable living across core sectors including food, water, energy, mobility, consumer goods, housing, finance, and leisure.
UNITE WITH US
Campaign
On March 15 consumer advocates will run diverse campaigns and activities worldwide. We build on our success in previous years with the scope of activities being wide yet relevant to national contexts. This can include anything from mobilising individuals and communities to take sustainable actions, to awareness raising in schools, universities, workplaces to pop-up stands in towns or roadshows to rural remote regions, to dialogues with policy makers, to open letters, social media campaigns, photography exhibitions, special video messages from officials, or the release of research or technology.
We invite all those committed to sustainable living to join our call on 15 March. Contact us for campaign guidance.
Sustainable Living Summit: a global platform for exchange, accountability and action
This includes building strong bridges between consumer advocates, business, government, multilateral forums and academia. During the week ahead of World Consumer Rights Day (10-14 March), we will host a series of discussions, panels, addresses and sprints. Here, leaders will share insights, challenges, innovations and commitments to progress sustainable living. We will soon announce how partners can join and benefit from this platform.
World Consumer Rights Day has been celebrated for more than four decades, and year on year it reaches new breadth and depths. We have typically united 600+ leaders in dialogues for our clean energy transition campaign, and the first ever consumer centric forum on fair digital finance. Last year 100+ consumer advocacy organisations and partners united to demand fair and responsible AI.
WHY IS THIS WORLD CONSUMER RIGHTS DAY UNIQUE?
Next year is a landmark moment for commitments and action across government and other stakeholders.
- At the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6) in March 2024, a historic resolution on Promoting Sustainable Lifestyles was passed. In December 2025, UNEA-7 will be an important moment to explore countries’ progress towards this goal, and strengthen commitments towards sustainable living.
- Sustainable living will also be on the agenda at COP30 in Brazil in November 2025. At COP29, Consumers International called for countries to include action on sustainable living in their national climate commitments (Nationally-Determined Contributions, NDCs), and it will be important to build on this ambition in November.
- Importantly, we will be five years from the delivering of the Sustainable Development Goals, many of which are off track.
World Consumer Rights Day will help to drive action on these areas. Beyond 15 March, we will use the insights, commitments and coalitions established to help turn aspiration into action.
