Want customers to actually believe your sustainability story?

Every company you can think of is doing something authentically positive for the environment. Roof solar. Refillable packaging. Switching a delivery van for an electric vehicle. Intent is generally good.

The problem is how that effort gets written up and published.

Mix one lazy sentence with a real environmental win and you start to have a greenwashing campaign. Regulators are catching on. Your customers saw it a long time ago.

The good news?

It’s not difficult to properly communicate environmental claims. Just include details, substantiation and some editorial control over what is said and where it is published.

What’s covered below:

• Why Green Claims Keep Backfiring
• The Words That Cause Problems
• Proof Beats Adjectives
• Keeping Green Claims Accurate Across Every Location
• Avoiding The Greenhushing Trap

Why Green Claims Keep Backfiring

Here’s the uncomfortable part…

An EU-wide assessment of environmental claims by the European Commission showed that 53% of green claims were either vague, misleading or unsubstantiated — and 40% of green claims lacked any supporting evidence. 50% of all green labels provide low or no consumer assurance of verification.

That’s the culture your sustainability message hits. Humans have been deceived in the past so they show up distrusting.

Things get trickier when a brand has multiple sites. Copywriting one environmental claim at HQ can distribute to dozens of listings in seconds. This is typically done through a multi-location posting API that pushes content to every location from a single dashboard. Convenient? Yes. It’s also how one unsubstantiated claim goes live to 40 cities before anyone fact checks it. Marketers using features for Google Businesses to schedule sustainability updates across branches should treat each claim like a press release that requires documentation – not a caption. The multi-location posting API will send out poorly written claims with the same ease as well-written ones.

The Words That Cause Problems

Vague words are where greenwashing usually starts. Not outright lies… just fog.

Words such as “eco-friendly”, “green”, “natural” and “sustainable” seem innocuous. Standing alone, with no substantiation behind them, that is exactly what regulators rip apart.

Swap the fog for facts:

• “Eco-friendly packaging” becomes “packaging made from 80% recycled cardboard”
• “Carbon neutral delivery” becomes “delivery emissions cut 22% since 2023”
• “Sustainable sourcing” becomes “74% of our coffee is Rainforest Alliance certified”
• “Green store” becomes “this branch runs on 100% renewable electricity”

Notice the difference? Anyone can check the second version of each pair. That’s the entire test.

If it can’t be measured, dated and verified by someone independent of the business, don’t make the environmental claim public.

Proof Beats Adjectives

There are three ingredients to every environmental claim: a quantity, a deadline and a scapegoat.

Miss one and the claim gets shaky.

“Emissions down 30%” sounds impressive until you realize it means very little by itself. Reduced by 30% since when? How are they being measured? Does it include just their own operations, or does it represent the full supply chain? You may think customers don’t care about those details, but journalists and competitors certainly will.

Keep an evidence file for every green claim in circulation. It should hold:

• The raw data and who calculated it
• The reporting period the figure actually covers
• Any third-party audit or certification documents
• The date the claim needs reviewing again

Certification carries most of the burden in this area. B Corp, Energy Star, FSC and ISO 14001 all require some sort of third party verification of the work. A badge with a searchable registration number is worth infinitely more than a paragraph of adjectives.

And when a certification lapses, the claim comes down. Immediately.

Archives count too. An environmental claim posted 3 years ago is live and indexed right now. Anyone reading it believes it applies to your company today. Review the archive at least annually and revise/delete anything your company can no longer support.

Keeping Green Claims Accurate Across Every Location

This is where multi-location brands trip up hardest.

Fairly rarely does Sustainability happen smoothly. Store one has solar panels. Store two leases space in a shopping center and can’t put anything on their roof. One location composts its food scraps, another location doesn’t have a service available to pick it up.

Claiming “all our stores run on renewable energy” when nine out of twelve do is FALSE, even if it’s accidental.

Before a green message goes out across locations, check:

• Which sites can genuinely back the claim up
• Whether local suppliers or energy providers differ by region
• If certifications cover every branch or just the flagship
• Whether the wording still works under each country’s advertising rules

Having a posting API that works across multiple locations makes this simple instead of scary. Rather than one blanket claim, claims are sliced and diced: solar locations see the solar claim, composting locations see the waste claim, and so on and so forth through everything else that is universally true.

Accuracy is important on the brand level, too. Research from PwC discovered consumers will pay 9.7% more for sustainable products, but that’s only if they walk into a store and the claim checks out.

Avoiding The Greenhushing Trap

Here’s something that surprises a lot of marketing teams…

The safest-looking option — saying nothing at all — carries its own cost.

It has a name: greenhushing. Companies do genuine environmental good works, but don’t tell anyone about them. Because they’re afraid of saying something stupid. The customer hears nothing. Someone else steals their thunder with lesser claims.

The answer isn’t silence. It’s better sentences.

Publishing one little proven thing about your environmental impact each month gains more credibility than a single massive annual sustainability promise. Solar generation statistics, one metric of waste diversion, a vendor who converted to using recycled packaging — these are announcements that slowly accumulate into bona fide credentials.

Scrutiny from both sides is increasing. Greenwashing incidents fell globally in 2024, but high severity scores increased 30% last year, RepRisk found. There were fewer greenwashing cases overall than any year in the past six, signaling regulatory scrutiny is heating up. Deliberate and systematic cases are being punished more severely than ever before.

Publish the truthful, dull, specific version. “Reduced single-use plastic in our packaging by 41% last year, as audited by our suppliers” will never win a design contest. It also will never end up in a regulator’s dossier.

Language of progress helps too. “Working towards”, “reduced by” and “on track for” acknowledge a journey. “Fully sustainable” almost never does.

Sealing Up Your Environmental Messaging

Simple secret to honest environmental communication: Say only what you can back up. Then back it up. Right away.

To quickly recap:

• Replace vague green adjectives with measured figures
• Attach a number, a date and a source to every claim
• Let third-party certifications carry the credibility
• Segment claims by location so nothing gets overstated
• Review every claim when data or certifications expire

Trust and sustainability are both built over time. Make small truthful claims and your sustainability credibility will grow on its own.