It wasn’t that long ago that we first heard the term “greenhushing”, a word which described the fear that a lot of businesses had of expressing any views on their sustainability strategy for concerns about being accused of “greenwashing”.

The EBN disapproved of this word because we saw real evidence of businesses refusing to share information and data on what they were doing. Sharing and collaborating are not natural bedfellows to business but we need to do more of it without fear of being called out.

This is why we were pleased to see some sensible clarity coming from the Advertising Standards Authority recently when their CEO Guy Parker told EDIE about the most common greenwashing pitfalls his team sees businesses falling into and provided his advice on avoiding them.

When our consultancy Xeed ESG, works with clients that are relatively new to embracing sustainability we say that evidence is critical. Too often we encounter words such as “aim”, “plan” and “intend” alongside some spurious (to say the least) claims about products or services being “green”, “sustainable” or “eco” without further explanation.

But there is little commercial point in investing into sustainability if you don’t tell your stakeholders what you are doing. The trick is what to say.

Beyond having a clear sustainability strategy with targets and terminology understood across the business, Parker provides a handful of other “golden rules” – the first of which is “avoiding absolute green claims like the plague”.

“Be conditional, be precise and focus claims on what is meaningful. Focusing on what’s here and what’s next, rather than long-term or aspirational, can help,” Parker elaborates, noting that many customers will interpret claims around a long-term net-zero target far differently than environmental experts will.

 

Linked to this, Parker advocates for businesses to:

 

“level with customers”, “being honest with them about the challenges you face and how far you are on your journey”.

“I think your ads will be better off for it,” Parker argues. “People don’t expect you to have solved this problem, they know that it’s a process… Being a bit humble, I think, makes for more credible and more believable, better ads”. Obviously, this goes way further than advertising but this is his domain.

Being humble is for us the absolute critical point. It is unrealistic to expect any business to be perfect, even the best resourced and committed corporates. It is sensible and much more credible to tell people you have a long way to go, but you have genuinely started than to make outlandish claims. Well done the ASA for such clear guidance.