Environmental pressures from households are significant and their impacts are likely to intensify over the coming years. The project on Household Behaviour and Environmental Policy initiated by the Environment Directorate aims at better understanding household consumption patterns and household responses to environmental policies in order to provide guidance to policy-makers.

Public procurement, or the purchase of goods and services using public funds, covers a range of sectors where environmental issues are important, from the construction of highways and buildings to the supply of power, water and sanitation services and the use of vehicles. Some OECD countries have already begun to promote greener public purchasing, for example through information targeted at procurement officers and the use of environmental pricing and other related financial tools in the evaluation of investments, and the OECD's activities in this area date from 1996.