Beyond the false binary
Clear thinking on sustainability communication.
Between 2021 and 2024 there was a 35% drop in the number of S&P 500 firms publishing press releases about their sustainability reports.
Over a similar period, company earnings calls went from being hotbeds of discussion about clean energy technology, carbon and climate change in 2021 to almost nothing a few years later.
We don’t need to get too deep into the “why” in this particular newsletter (although political scrutiny, fear of greenwashing and the incompatibility of growth and sustainability are probably a couple of reasons).
But, it’s a worrying trend.
If, like me, you find yourself wandering around conference venues, attending meetings and reading the latest industry musings, you’re probably hearing that “companies are still doing the work of decarbonising and becoming more efficient – they’re just not talking about it”.
Indeed, in the UN Global Compact’s latest CEO study, 88% of 2,000 chief executives argued that the business case for sustainability is stronger today than it was five years ago, at the height of SDG-mania, and 99% said their companies are maintaining or expanding their sustainability commitments.
Even if that sample of CEOs is true to their word, and that’s a big ‘if’ (how many are going to say sustainability is not important, even if they privately feel that way?), the silence is deafening.
The stream of announcements and commitments has turned into a drip, drip, drip of occasional messaging.
That’s a problem. Because nothing fuels inertia quite like silence.
And nothing fuels inaction like inertia.
The other day I read an article that claimed ‘greenhushing’ is the new greenwashing. I chuckled, but the central point was hard to argue with – both greenhushing and greenwashing are harmful to the progress we need to make to decarbonise society in a systematic and human-centric way.
My take on this is that sustainability and communications professionals working for big brands and enterprises are caught in a pincer movement – between greenhusing (continuing the work but reducing visibility) and greenwashing (making progress look more transformative than it is) – because there is no real standard for communicating sustainability progress well.
So, in response, we have developed a piece of work to unpack this and attempt to push forward. It’s called ‘How to avoid the greenwashing/greenhushing trap using evidence-based narratives’, and you can download it for free below.
The paper will tell you more, but, in essence, it puts forward the argument that exaggeration and retreat is a false binary. And somewhere in the middle is a sound method to communicating sustainability – through contextual communication and evidence-based narratives.
We outline this concept and a few techniques sustainability and communications professionals can adopt to craft sustainability messaging that is defensible and adds value.
I’d love to know what you think. Let me know by getting in touch: matthew@touchline.com.
Thanks for reading.