Marketing your sustainability story without the greenwashing

You've made genuine changes to your business. Switched suppliers. Invested in more efficient systems. Rethought your packaging, your processes, maybe even your entire business model.

And now you're stuck in an uncomfortable position. Staying quiet means losing ground to competitors who shout about every minor initiative, while speaking up risks being lumped in with brands making hollow promises.

It's a genuine dilemma. The cynicism is understandable. Research from Capgemini found that 52% of consumers now believe organisations are greenwashing their initiatives, up from 33% just a year earlier. Your customers have every right to be sceptical.

But that cynicism also creates opportunity. When most environmental claims feel generic and unsubstantiated, businesses that communicate with specificity and honesty stand out.

What greenwashing actually looks like

Before we discuss what works, it helps to understand what doesn't.

Greenwashing isn't always deliberate deception. More often, it's well-intentioned marketing that slips into problematic territory through vagueness, omission or overreach.

The CMA's Green Claims Code identifies principles that environmental claims must meet.

• They need to be truthful, accurate, clear and unambiguous.

• They must not omit important information.

• Comparisons need to be fair.

• Claims should consider the full lifecycle of a product or service.

• And everything must be substantiated.

Sounds straightforward. Yet businesses trip over these principles constantly.

Terms like "eco-friendly", "sustainable" and "green" appear everywhere, typically without any explanation of what they actually mean in context.

Visual greenwashing is equally common – nature imagery, green colour palettes and leaf motifs that create environmental associations without any substance behind them.

The consequences have become serious. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the CMA can now fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover for misleading environmental claims.

The Advertising Standards Authority continues to issue rulings against brands whose claims don't stack up.

And consumers themselves are voting with their wallets. YouGov research shows that only 4% of British consumers completely trust sustainability logos, with 13% saying they don't trust them at all.

The pattern is clear. Vague claims create suspicion. Suspicion damages credibility. And damaged credibility undermines even genuine efforts.

What customers and procurement teams actually want

Building trust isn't complicated, and customers and B2B (business-to-business) procurement teams want the same thing – specificity.

They want to know what you've actually done, what it measurably changed and what you're still working on.

For B2C (business-to-consumer) audiences, this means moving beyond aspiration to documentation.

Instead of claiming to be "committed to sustainability", explain that you reduced packaging weight by 23% last year, or that 78% of your materials now come from certified sources. Numbers are harder to dismiss than adjectives.

The B2B landscape is even more demanding

Large organisations increasingly ask their suppliers to demonstrate genuine environmental credentials as part of procurement. This isn't just box-ticking.

The UK government requires suppliers bidding for contracts over £5 million per year to publish a Carbon Reduction Plan that includes Scope 3 emissions.

Similar requirements are cascading through private sector supply chains as companies recognise that their own environmental reporting depends on the credibility of their suppliers' data.

For smaller businesses, this creates both pressure and opportunity. The pressure is obvious – you need to be able to answer increasingly sophisticated questions about your environmental performance.

But the opportunity is equally real. Many of your competitors can't answer those questions credibly. If you can, you've just differentiated yourself in ways that matter to procurement decisions.

Scope 3 emissions, which cover a company's entire value chain, typically account for 70% to 90% of a business's total carbon footprint. This means your customers' environmental performance often depends on yours.

When a procurement team asks about your sustainability credentials, they're not making conversation. They're assessing whether working with you creates risk or opportunity for their own reporting.

Building your story on evidence rather than aspiration

The most effective sustainability communications share a common structure. They start with what you've done, move to what you can prove and acknowledge what you're still working on.

"What you've done"

"What you've done" means specific actions with measurable outcomes, like:

• switching to a renewable energy supplier

• reducing water consumption by a documented percentage

• achieving a particular certification

These are claims that can be verified, which makes them claims that people can believe.

"What you can prove"

"What you can prove" means having the documentation ready when someone asks. This might include:

• energy bills showing consumption changes

• certification documents from recognised bodies

• supplier audits confirming ethical sourcing

The CMA's guidance explicitly expects businesses to have this evidence on file before making any environmental claim.

Third-party certifications

Third-party certifications matter here. B Corp certification, which now covers over 2,000 UK businesses, requires companies to meet rigorous standards across governance, workers, community, customers and environment.

ISO 14001 provides a framework for environmental management systems. Industry-specific certifications address particular sectors. Each of these gives external validation to claims you might otherwise make alone.

What makes certification valuable isn't just the badge, but the process. Achieving B Corp status, for instance, requires scoring at least 80 points on a 200-point assessment, then re-certifying every three years.

That ongoing accountability creates exactly the kind of evidence trail that builds credibility over time.

The operational investments behind credible claims

The most convincing evidence usually comes not from marketing initiatives but from operational investments.

Infrastructure changes speak louder than campaigns because they require real capital commitment and produce measurable results.

Think about what actually reduces environmental impact.

• More efficient equipment

• Better building management

• Smarter logistics

• Improved waste handling

These aren't glamorous, but they're genuine. And they create the kind of documentation that procurement teams actually want to see.

If your business operates commercial premises, particularly in a sector with significant energy demands, building systems often represent the largest opportunity for verifiable improvement.

Working with BEMS specialists like Standard Control Systems to implement proper energy management infrastructure produces exactly the kind of measurable outcomes that strengthen claims around sustainability.

Yes, you're saying you care about energy efficiency, but you can also show the monitoring data, the consumption trends and the verified reductions.

This principle extends beyond building management. Any investment that creates an audit trail, produces ongoing data and can be independently verified becomes an asset for your sustainability communications.

It transforms "we believe in sustainability" into "here's what we spent, here's what changed and here's how we're tracking it".

The contrast with pure marketing initiatives is stark. A campaign might create awareness. An infrastructure investment creates evidence.

Transparency as strategy

Counter-intuitively, acknowledging what you haven't yet achieved often builds more trust than presenting a polished facade.

Consumers have become sophisticated at detecting corporate performance. They know that real sustainability journeys involve trade-offs, compromises and ongoing challenges.

The businesses that communicate most effectively tend to frame their efforts as progress rather than perfection. They explain:

• where they started

• what they've changed

• what remains difficult

This journey narrative resonates because it mirrors how actual improvement works – incrementally, with setbacks, requiring ongoing attention.

What this looks like in practice

Instead of claiming to be "carbon neutral", you might explain that:

• you've reduced emissions by a specific percentage

• you're working toward net zero by a stated date

• certain aspects of your operations remain challenging to decarbonise

This approach is harder to attack precisely because it's honest about limitations.

The language matters too.

• "We've reduced" beats "we're committed to reducing".

• "Our data shows" beats "we believe".

• Active, past-tense claims about documented achievements create a different impression than future-tense aspirations. One describes what you've done. The other describes what you hope to do. Audiences can tell the difference.

Publishing environmental reports that include both successes and ongoing challenges creates accountability that strengthens credibility.

Setting public targets and then reporting against them, honestly, demonstrates commitment that mere claims can't.

Responding to customer questions with genuine information, even when the answer isn't perfect, builds relationships that marketing polish doesn't.

Putting your story to work

Communication around sustainability means delivering consistent messaging across a number of different channels, adapted for different audiences but anchored in the same verified facts.

• Your website should make environmental information accessible. Procurement teams shouldn't need to request documents that they could find online.

• B2B pitches and tender responses should include specific evidence rather than general statements.

• Social media can tell ongoing stories of progress rather than making isolated claims.

• Visual documentation helps enormously – before and after comparisons, behind-the-scenes content showing actual operations and data visualisations that make consumption trends tangible

The businesses getting this right treat sustainability communication as an ongoing conversation rather than a campaign. They:

• document their progress

• report honestly when targets are missed

• update their claims as circumstances change

• respond to questions with substance rather than deflection

What they don't do is wait until everything is perfect. Sustainability is inherently a process.

Communicating that process honestly, with evidence and appropriate humility, builds the kind of trust that polished claims never can.

The regulatory environment will only become more demanding. The CMA continues to investigate sectors and issue guidance. Consumer expectations continue to rise. And B2B procurement requirements are becoming more sophisticated, not less.

Businesses that build strong sustainability communications now, anchored in genuine operational improvements and documented with verifiable evidence, position themselves well for a landscape where vague claims will increasingly invite scrutiny.

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