No time for Greenwashing: Brands need a New Way to Talk about Sustainability

If you’ve bumped into a brand called Holcim lately , you might have found yourself wondering what a cement company has to do with circularity, or the planet, or… boats. All fair questions. Especially given that cement accounts for 8% of global CO? emissions .

Holcim isn’t alone. Many brands borrow the language of environmentalism in an attempt to give themselves an ethical gloss. They talk about ‘sustainability’ or ‘doing good for the planet’, without any real sense of what they mean, or how any of it’s relevant to their business.

But this kind of greenwashing is wearing thin. As the climate crisis gets realer than real, consumers are becoming increasingly switched on and savvy when it comes to environmental issues. Making it harder to get away with ‘eco’-led messaging that’s more cynicism than substance, as brands like Innocent have learned the hard way .

To steer clear of greenwashing, brands need to radically reinvent the way they talk about sustainability. Step one is to cut the eco-jargon and get specific. So your jackets are ‘sustainable’. In what way? Do you mean that their production doesn’t deplete resources? Do you mean that they’re so hard-wearing they’ll last a lifetime? Do you mean that the materials they’re made from are recyclable? Brands like Reformation are already giving us a blueprint for this kind of nuts-and-bolts sustainability writing .

But when challenged to be specific, many brands run into problems. Because how can you be specific when you don’t have anything specific to say? Which brings us to the second (bigger) step brands need to take to get sustainability writing right: build sustainability into your business. Consumers can smell inauthenticity; and if you’re talking the talk without walking the walk, they’ll know about it.

It’s why the likes of Patagonia have seen so much success building their brand on a sustainability story. Because they have one to tell. They’ve put their money where their mouth is, and built sustainability into the heart of how they operate . It lets them talk about environmental issues in a way that’s true to who they are, and resonates with consumers.

So what if you’re not Patagonia? What if your work does more planetary harm than good? Then you have a couple of stark options: change up, or shut up. Last year, Honest Burger decked its dining tables with a booklet titled ‘Could Do Better’. The booklet laid out , in plain terms, the issues with the burger chain’s farming practices, and what they were doing to fix those issues. This wasn’t a risky punt. It was a smart step for a brand that had hung its hat on being ‘honest’.

Unless your business is taking meaningful action to make itself sustainable, then sustainability shouldn’t be centre-stage in your messaging. Because the truth is: brand writing about sustainability is like any other sort of brand writing – it needs to be based on a true story. Tone of voice and messaging aren’t wrappers you can superficially spin around your business. They have to reflect something truthful and central to who you are. It’s only then your brand can start to mean something to the people it talks to.

If you’ve got a sustainability story waiting to be told by How&How, get in touch .