diff --git a/src/rosdep2/sources_list.py b/src/rosdep2/sources_list.py
index 9d89a8204..53fb41935 100644
--- a/src/rosdep2/sources_list.py
+++ b/src/rosdep2/sources_list.py
@@ -96,11 +96,7 @@ def get_sources_list_dirs(source_list_dir):
 def get_sources_list_dir():
     # base of where we read config files from
     # TODO: windows
-    if 0:
-        # we can't use etc/ros because environment config does not carry over under sudo
-        etc_ros = rospkg.get_etc_ros_dir()
-    else:
-        etc_ros = '/etc/ros'
+    etc_ros = os.environ.get('ROSDEP_ETC_DIR', '/etc/ros')
     # compute default system wide sources directory
     sys_sources_list_dir = os.path.join(etc_ros, 'rosdep', SOURCES_LIST_DIR)
     sources_list_dirs = get_sources_list_dirs(sys_sources_list_dir)