A new study from Instinctif Partners has revealed that just over half of consumers from the UK are unwilling to take companies at their word when they say that they are doing more to reduce the environmental impact of their operations.

Although Brits are now far more attuned to the need to make eco-friendly choices as part of their day-to-day spending habits, it seems that retailers and brands are not seen as being especially trustworthy, even if they argue that they are doing their bit for the planet.

Furthermore, under a fifth of respondents to the study said that they believed businesses were actually taking the climate crisis seriously and responding with suitably drastic changes to their policies in order to curb global warming.

60 per cent of those questioned said that they were actively attempting to be more sustainable in their spending decisions, although they are encountering obstacles in their attempts to achieve this. 44 per cent argued that identifying eco-friendly products is a time-consuming process that they cannot usually fit into their lives, even if safe shopping online makes it easy to find ethical sustainable items.

It seems that consumers want the burden of the responsibility for making sustainable choices to be shifted to retailers and brands, yet this lack of confidence amongst shoppers suggests that there is definitely a need for companies to increase their environmentally conscious efforts in a tangible way.

Report spokesperson Louise McLaren said that while plenty of brands were expressing their commitment to adopting more sustainable practices, the fact that consumers do not believe them when they make these claims in public means that more work needs to be done to erode the cynical opinions which many people hold about the businesses they engage with.