Despite concern about environmental issues, the majority of French households do not adopt eco‐friendly practices. We propose a practice theory approach, enriched by key concepts from Bourdieu (distinction) and Lamont (symbolic boundaries), to understand the links between individual practices and collective frameworks. Drawing on an ethnographic study of 30 households in France, we explore food practices and the way people describe them. Our results are twofold: first, individuals see eco‐friendly practices as strongly related to specific groups and normative standards, from which they may want to distinguish themselves. Even when people display eco‐friendly practices, they associate them with other rationales. Second, because eco‐friendly practices are not widely valued, they do not provide the same rewards as the implementation of other standards that are more consensual. We draw some practical implications for public policies from these results. A desegmentation of eco‐friendly practices might prove useful, allowing them to be associated with wider social groups and to convey more collective positive meanings. Moreover, a large proportion of eco‐friendly practices are in continuity with what individuals are already doing. Their implementation could benefit if it were made coherent with other practices, rather than being portrayed in public discourse as requiring a radical change. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment