The sustainability barometer uses twice-yearly online surveys to study consumers’ perceptions of how environmentally responsible a company, brand or category is, and how this influences their reported buying behaviour. Companies will be able to benchmark their “sustainability score” against competitors.

“There is a clear discrepancy between objective sustainability from a business point-of-view and subjective perceived sustainability competence from the consumer point-of-view,” said Mafowerk’s co-founder Heiko Leipold.

Preparatory studies highlighted that the importance of sustainability is “extremely variable” between product categories, the agency said, and that it tends to be more important to female and older consumers. Although it has a big influence on buying decisions for laundry and food, in other categories such as alcoholic drinks the importance of sustainability is actually falling.