The Earth Summit on Sustainable Development in 1992 brought about a fundamental shift in the mandate of environmental policy. How to protect the environment and nature from citizens was no longer the main issue. Rather, the focus was how to organize majorities among citizens for a collective effort on a societal transformation towards sustainability. The environmental effects of citizens’ everyday routines of consumption came into focus and ways of influencing them were sought. In this paper, one of the strategies German environmental policy employs for observing the everyday consumption of citizens is analyzed. How this approach has evolved during the last decades will be shown, as well as shortcomings of the current approach. Drawing on considerations from theories of social practice, three kinds of reason for these shortcomings are discussed. The first one lies in an ambivalent (or paradoxical) relation of environmental policy‐makers to consumers’ ‘rationality’. The second reason is related to the first and refers to the different horizons of consumers’ everyday practices and practices of environmental policy. The third reason is rooted in the excessive and unrealistic demand on environmental policy that accompanies the sustainability mandate. The paper concludes by suggesting a social innovation‐oriented policy as a way of connecting political goals to actual changes in consumption practices. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment