Last week I was in a room in central London, in the middle of a heatwave that everyone was trying not to talk about – which felt, in itself, like a fitting metaphor for what the session was actually about.

The event was Solutions House, hosted by change agency Futerra at London Climate Action Week. The subject: why are brands going quiet on sustainability, just as consumers want cheaper energy, healthier products and more resilient lives? It was run as a ‘fishbowl’ – a small, unusually honest format whereby the audience join speakers to say what they think, rather than just hearing from the script of their latest impact report. 

Speakers included Sebastian Munden CBE, Chair of WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) and Global Chair of climate action programme for the global advertising industry Ad Net Zero, and JD Sreekanth, Director of Group Sustainability at wholesale multinational Ahold Delhaize. Futerra chief solutionist, writer and speaker Solitaire Townsend hosted the discussion.

I came away with pages of notes and, honestly, a good deal of optimism – because the conversation was honest. Here’s what I think forward-thinking businesses need to hear from it.

The silence has a name – and it’s spreading

There’s a term doing the rounds in sustainability circles: greenhushing. It describes companies that are actively doing sustainability work but choosing not to talk about it – dropping claims, pulling back communications and letting their credentials go unsaid.

It is, on the face of it, a rational response to a hostile environment. Futerra’s Ride the Waves report – required reading if you haven’t seen it – tracks sustainability as a topic in media attention cycles going back to the 1960s. Itsfinding is unambiguous: we are currently in a downwave: the media isn’t rewarding sustainability coverage, the public has other preoccupations and brands have registered that.

The pressures driving the retreat – over and above the obvious geopolitical ones – are real and worth naming clearly:

• Regulatory scrutiny has sharpened. The green claims landscape in the UK and EU is more demanding than it has ever been. Brands that were previously comfortable with aspirational language are nervous, and not without reason.
• Consumers are fatigued – and sometimes sceptical. There’s a widely held perception that corporate sustainability promises rarely match delivery. That perception isn’t always fair, but it’s there, and brands are aware of it.
• Corporate ambitions have hit hard terrain. As Solitaire Townsend put it in the room, we are in the middle of a “great failing”. Many companies have already done the easy things. What remains requires genuine business model change, and that is held back by linear economic systems that are extraordinarily good at healing themselves.
• CMOs can’t find the return. The speakers reported that Gen Z, often positioned as the driving force behind sustainable consumption, are more lethargic on this than anticipated. Part of the reason, the discussion suggested, is a fundamental misunderstanding of progress: consumers can feel like nothing is improving because they’re measuring against a perfect end state rather than tracking actual movement. When everything feels like it’s falling short of perfection, it’s hard to celebrate the genuine gains.

The result? According to the Advertising Standards Authority, just 4.5% of adverts are currently making sustainability claims – near an all-time low.

But silence isn’t neutral

Here’s the thing the room kept coming back to: going quiet is not the safe option it might feel like.

The Creatives for Climate GreenSHOUTING Guide – a practical resource produced with B Lab and Nice and Serious, well worth downloading – makes this point with striking clarity. According to Harvard Business Review research cited in the guide, only 8% of companies have materially rolled back their sustainability commitments. Meanwhile, 53% are holding steady and 32% are actively expanding their efforts.

The action is still happening but the communication has stopped. And the void that leaves is not neutral – it fills with misinformation, consumer confusion and a slow erosion of the trust that took years to build.

There’s also a competitive dimension that doesn’t get discussed enough. The businesses that stay visible, that keep talking about what they’re doing and why, are the ones that will own the narrative when the next upwave comes. And on Futerra’s long-cycle analysis, that upwave is due imminently.

As Seb Munden put it – and it’s a line I keep thinking about: “Sustainability is a word for people in charge of things, not for normal citizens.” The implication is important: the language of sustainability has always been insider language. The job of communications is to translate that language into something that lands in people’s actual lives.

What the room agreed actually works

The second half of the session was more solutions-focused, and the consensus that emerged was both practical and, in places, genuinely reframing.

1. Build confidence in your claims before you make them

The chilling effect of green claims regulation is real – but it shouldn’t produce paralysis. The answer is to invest in getting your claims right, not to stop making them. That means ensuring the substance is there before the story. This is where good sustainability advice pays for itself many times over: the discipline of building defensible, evidenced positions creates the confidence to communicate them.

2. Stop talking about purpose. Start making people’s lives better.

This was perhaps the sharpest reframe of the session: the shift from claims to offers. Rather than telling customers what you stand for, show them what your sustainability work actually does for them – in functional, practical terms. This isn’t just a communications shift; it’s a strategic one. It asks businesses to connect their impact work directly to the value they deliver to real people.

3. Build category solutions, not solo stories

Sector-wide initiatives – like Reposit‘s multi-brand returnable packaging platform, or refill schemes in beauty – are more powerful than individual brand claims because they create a rising tide. Brands that are willing to collaborate on shared infrastructure, rather than competing for impact bragging rights, tend to earn more durable trust.

4. Sustainability teams need to show up as strategic commercial partners

I have long been of the view that sustainability folks should see themselves, and be seen, in a new light. Not as reporting experts or internal activists, but as critical strategic business partners who can speak the language of risk, resilience and commercial value. They need to be invited into the room early enough to shape decisions, not just document them afterwards. The earlier and more strategically sustainability is embedded in a business, the more value it creates.

5. Don’t charge a premium for sustainability, and don’t put the burden on consumers

Ego marketing – broadcasting what your company is doing in a way that implicitly asks consumers to feel good about choosing you – doesn’t work. Charging a green premium that asks customers to fund your sustainability ambitions works even less. What does work: selling the benefits. Functional benefits, social benefits, emotional benefits. The same marketing fundamentals that have always applied – applied to work that happens to be sustainable.

Seb Munden’s second quotable of the afternoon: “There will always be people shouting at you. You don’t always have to listen.” A reminder that the scrutiny that has driven many brands into silence is not the whole of public opinion – and letting the loudest voices set the agenda is itself a strategic choice.

What this means if you’re a B Corp – or working toward it

B Corp certification is, among other things, one of the most credible sustainability communications assets available to a business. It is independently verified, comprehensive and covers all areas of a business – not just carbon. It is the kind of claim that can stand up to scrutiny.

But certification is only an asset if you use it.

The GreenSHOUTING Guide offers a practical framework built around what it calls the Seven Dials of GreenSHOUTING – communication principles built on demonstrable progress rather than aspirational perfection. That framing maps directly onto what B Corp already demands of you. The process of achieving and maintaining certification creates exactly the kind of evidenced, rigorous, independently-verified progress story the guide says consumers and stakeholders will actually respond to.

You’ve done the hard work. The question is whether you’re telling the story with enough confidence – and enough commercial craft – for it to land.

That’s not a simple communications fix. It sits at the intersection of sustainability strategy, brand positioning and commercial intent. Getting it right requires someone who understands all three.

Let’s talk

If the question of how to bring your sustainability work into your communications – credibly, confidently and in a way that creates genuine commercial value – is one you’re wrestling with, we’d like to be part of that conversation.

We work with values-led businesses at exactly this intersection: helping leadership teams build the substance, then find the story that makes it land – not as an afterthought but from the start.

Book a strategic conversation with our team here.