Sustainability and eco-friendly practices are extremely popular right now. Nielsen found that the US sustainability market will reach $150 billion by next year, and a recent study of consumer packaged goods (CPG) purchasing found that 50% of CPG growth came from sustainability-marketed products between 2013-2018.
With all of this growth, it’s hard not to jump on the bandwagon and start marketing your business with a sustainability angle. Before you rewrite your website and product descriptions, or even update your social media profiles, it’s worth learning about best practices for incorporating sustainability into your marketing, including greenwashing and how to avoid it.
Merriam-Webster defines greenwashing as:
Expressions of environmentalist concerns especially as a cover for products, policies, or activities
Basically, since sustainability has become popular, there are companies that have been misusing the term, deliberately marketing their products as sustainable (even if they aren’t) and misleading their customers. A lot of this stems from companies wanting to improve customers’ perceptions of their brand, but when greenwashing is exposed it can have negative consequences.
For instance, Procter & Gamble’s Tide laundry detergent was found to have misled consumers about its plant-based laundry detergent by making certain implied claims about the product. In another example, fast fashion brand H&M was found to be misleading customers about turning donated clothing into new garments. In both cases, the large brands lost goodwill and customer perception suffered.
That isn’t to say you shouldn’t promote your business’ sustainability practices, but there are two basic rules you should follow to avoid greenwashing:
Being honest and transparent with customers about your business’ sustainability practices really is beneficial. Customers will appreciate the information, and are likely to use it to inform their purchasing decisions.
If you’re looking to be more sustainable in your business practices but haven’t implemented any changes yet, you can share that with your customers. Let’s say you’re working on sourcing more sustainable goods to sell in your store, are switching over to renewable energy sources, or are looking at more sustainable packaging options. All of those changes are impactful, and you can tell customers where you are in your process. They’ll appreciate the information and likely be excited for these upcoming changes. If you’re more comfortable with waiting, you can wait until you’ve made changes before sharing them, too.
If you’ve already made sustainability-minded changes to your business, you can share that with your customers truthfully and in a straightforward manner. Don’t try and make a change seem bigger than it is, or try and twist things to seem better than they are. You can share any changes you’ve made, big or small, with customers through a dedicated campaign celebrating your business’ sustainability moves, or by simply including it in your existing marketing.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issues free Green Guides to help businesses apply certain principles to their environmental and sustainability-related marketing claims. These guides also include information about how customers might interpret certain claims, how you can back up your claims, and how to avoid deceiving customers.
The first Green Guides were issued in 1992, and the last update to the Green Guides was in 2012. While that was a while ago, the latest Green Guide includes details about:
The guides can be a bit dense, but they have great information and examples for you to use when working on your business’ marketing.
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Ada Chen
Ada Chen
