Our research

Sust began life as a technology idea: a web browser extension that would provide information about the sustainability of products as you browsed them on e-commerce sites. Rather than jumping in and implementing it, though, we first wanted to find out how sustainably-minded consumers go about looking for products: what they want to achieve, the challenges they face, and how they could be better supported. The University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute funded us to do just that.

Through several rounds of research, we discovered a lot about what consumers do when they shop or research online for sustainable items, and how they differ in their practices and their lifestyle context. After a while, we focused on fashion consumption in particular.

This report gives a brief overview of that research, and how it led us to design Sust as you see it now.

We’re also working on longer academic papers; we’ll post those here when they become available.

If you have comments, please contact us.