Written by Sustainability: Why your Brain isn’t Cooperating
It’s time to discuss why your brain may not be cooperating with your sustainability efforts.
To illustrate the difficulty in taking “Simple Small Steps”, let’s use bar soap. Switching from liquid to bar soap should be simple: Buy a soap bar, and wash, repeat.
It doesn’t cost you more money; it’s cheaper. It uses less plastic. It lasts longer, but for many of us, it somehow feels wrong.
Why? And how can you make the change smoother?.
So why does it feel… so wrong?
Your hesitation, the feeling that it would be much better if you just went out and got more liquid soap, isn’t irrational—it’s human.
This isn’t about soap
It’s about bias, habit, comfort, and identity – But let’s keep talking about soap.
Cleanliness, Convenience & Culture
For decades, liquid soap has been sold to us as modern, clean, and mess-free. It pumps. It’s in a pretty bottle. It foams. It smells like “sea breeze” and “morning rain.” It’s effortless. Disposable. Disconnected.
Liquid soap became popular around the 1980s, when convenience took center stage in the North American home. Marketing made it synonymous with good hygiene and modern living. The pump bottle was a signal:
“This is Cleaner. This is safer. This is easier.”
Meanwhile, bar soap got branded as old-school. Slippery. Unhygienic. Something your grandparents used in the dark ages.
And it worked. A study by Mintel, a consumer research company stated that. ”Today, almost half (48 percent) of all US consumers believe bar soaps are covered in germs after use, a feeling that is particularly strong among consumers aged 18-24 (60 percent), as opposed to just 31 percent of older consumers aged 65+. Meanwhile, over half (55 percent) of all consumers believe bar soaps are less convenient than the liquid variety.”
“This is Modern. This is Progress. This is Better.”
Bar soap also challenges the deeply embedded story that convenience equals progress.
So, of course, it’s a little uncomfortable to go back.
Sustainability: Why your Brain isn’t cooperating
This is about being human. We humans have biases that are pretty much hardwired into our brains.
To quote Frontiers on these biases, “In natural and primordial situations, they may lead to quick, practical, and satisfying decisions, but these decisions may be poor and risky in a broad range of modern, complex, and long-term challenges, like climate change or pandemic prevention.”
The status quo bias
There’s also the role of the status quo bias: the tendency to stick with what we know, even when alternatives might be better. “When in doubt – do nothing”
Psychological Inertia:
The tendency to stick with default options unless there’s a compelling reason to change.
Cognitive Dissonance:
The discomfort experienced when holding conflicting beliefs, such as valuing sustainability but choosing convenience.
The Value-Action Gap
These factors create a mental environment where sustainable choices require more than just awareness—they demand a conscious effort to overcome ingrained habits. And this is called. The Value-Action Gap.
It’s the disconnect between our values (e.g., caring about the environment) and our actions (e.g., using disposable items).
This gap is influenced by the psychological barriers mentioned above and a society that worships convenience.
“This is Old-Fashioned. This isn’t Progress. This is Wrong.
Small changes—like swapping one kind of soap for another—can trigger surprising resistance because they interrupt daily routines and call into question long-held assumptions and those hardwired biases.
Can you rewire your brain?
Yes, you can. Psychology Today offers these 18 practical habit-building tips to help those sustainable swaps stick.”
Here’s the first three:
- Do something simple and achievable every day until it becomes automatic. Repetition of action causes habits to form. Even after conscious motivation decreases, once a habit is formed, less focus, conscious motivation, and effort are needed, which makes the habit far more likely to continue. This is why habits are useful—we’re able to use less mental energy because they become automatic.
- Start small so you won’t be discouraged. Gradually build up to bigger tasks and goals.
- When looking to create a habit, choose an easy context cue (e.g., after breakfast, when you finish reading a book, etc.).
“Even if bar soap still slips out of your hands, you’ve already done the hard part—reaching for change.”
So don’t feel guilty if a “simple swap” isn’t simple for you. Feel proud that you’re questioning it. Adjust. Experiment. Laugh at the slippery moments.
That’s how real change begins.
Try the Quiz – What’s Holding You Back.
Head over to The Goat’s Pen and join the thread: “This is not about bar soap.”
Whatever you swapped, tell us:
- What did you try switching to?
- Did you change? Or are you still resisting?
- What helped?
- What finally made It Stick?”
Or, if you switched with no problem, share your insights.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Join Motley for more “The Step is Higher than I Thought – Sustainable Changes.