Why Responsible Communicators Need To Act Now

The organisations doing things right have the most to gain from making it visible. But the implications go further than reputation. When enough good actors adopt a visible standard for responsible communications, it changes the rules for everyone.

The problem is not just greenwashing

The more widespread problem in sustainability communications right now is not the organisations making things up. It is the organisations doing genuine work but communicating it poorly, inconsistently, or not at all.

Caught between the risk of overstating progress and the paralysis of saying nothing, many have defaulted to a kind of strategic silence.

Both approaches erode trust. And in a market where 88% of people agree that greenwashing damages trust, and 57% say they would cut ties with a supplier found guilty of it, the cost of getting communications wrong, in either direction, is measurable and growing.

What signing the Charter actually means

The Anti-Greenwash Charter exists to solve this. Not as a regulator, and not as a badge to display and forget. It is an independent framework built on four standards: transparency, accountability, fairness, and honesty. Becoming a certified signatory means your communications have been assessed, and your organisation has committed to maintaining the Charter’s standards over time.

The process is structured and specific. It begins with an initial assessment that includes a regulatory history check covering any upheld complaints from the ASA, CMA, or FCA in the past five years, a media and public perception review, and an evaluation of current communications practice. From there, signatories develop a Green Claims Policy covering governance, standardised terminology, and the evidential requirements each claim must meet. Once approved, ongoing spot checks ensure communications remain aligned with both the policy and the Charter’s standards. Non-compliance must be resolved. Repeated failures result in suspension or revocation of signatory status.

That rigour is deliberate. It is also the point.

What it means in practice

Signatories report concrete outcomes. Fleur Carson of Karndean Designflooring noted that “independent validation has strengthened our reputation and reassured both customers and colleagues.” Kelsey Parsons of Gunnebo Entrance Control described how the Charter helped their team “communicate with greater clarity and accountability, ensuring every claim is backed by evidence.” Timothy Clement of Morgan Sindall Construction said it “demonstrated to our stakeholders that we take integrity seriously.”

These are not reputational outcomes in the abstract. Signatory status provides customers with clearer, more reliable information. It gives investors stronger governance evidence and reduced regulatory risk. It gives employees confidence that public claims reflect internal values. And it supports partners and suppliers through procurement processes and RFP responses where evidence of responsible communication practice is increasingly expected.

The Charter’s own research shows that 72% of respondents are more likely to support brands with verifiable sustainability claims. Independent validation is not a nice-to-have. It is becoming a purchasing and procurement factor.

The bigger picture: what happens when good actors lead

This is where the argument becomes more interesting. The value of a growing community of certified signatories is not just the sum of individual reputational benefits. It is what that community does to the wider market.

When organisations that communicate responsibly become visibly recognisable, and when that recognition carries measurable commercial and reputational weight, it creates a new kind of pressure on those that do not.

Not a regulatory pressure, at least not yet, but something more immediate: a licence-to-operate pressure. Stakeholders, procurement teams, investors, and customers begin to expect the standard. Absence of it becomes a question that needs answering.

That pressure has a predictable effect. Organisations that want to meet the standard have to first communicate honestly about where they are. Not where they aspire to be. Not a curated version of their progress. Where they actually are.

And that honesty, uncomfortable as it may be, tends to surface the gaps. The areas where communications have been vague are often the areas where the underlying practice needs attention too.

Nobody wants to have to tell a less positive story. That instinct, channelled constructively, becomes a driver for operational improvement. Organisations that commit to transparent communication about their sustainability journey are, in effect, committing to close the gaps that transparency exposes. The communication standard and the operational standard pull each other forward.

This is how a voluntary standard changes a market. Not by naming and shaming, but by making visible what good looks like, and letting the logic of accountability do the rest.

The implication for those that do not engage

The regulatory environment is tightening in ways that make unsubstantiated claims an active liability. The EU’s Empowering Consumers Directive becomes binding from September 2026. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority can now fine organisations up to 10% of worldwide annual turnover for misleading claims. The number of greenwashing court cases more than doubled between 2017 and 2023.

Organisations without a documented Green Claims Policy, without evidence-based substantiation, and without independent oversight are not simply behind the curve. They are exposed. But the more significant pressure may not come from regulators at all. It may come from peers.

As the community of certified signatories grows, the standard they represent becomes the reference point against which others are measured.

The question shifts from “are you compliant?” to “can you demonstrate that your communications are honest?” That is a harder question to deflect.

Why we need the right organisations to sign

Since launching in 2022, the Charter has worked with certified signatories including Morgan Sindall Construction, Karndean Designflooring, Gunnebo Entrance Control, and Speedy Hire. The standard is growing. But its credibility depends on the quality of the organisations willing to be held to it.

If your communications are honest, your claims are substantiated, and your organisation is prepared to put that to an independent test, the Charter is where that commitment becomes visible, verifiable, and valued.

The organisations that act now will not simply be protecting their own reputation. They will be raising the bar for their entire market. And in doing so, they will be contributing to something more important than any individual signatory status: a communications environment where honesty about sustainability is the norm, not the exception.

Sustainability Communications with Confidence

If your organisation wants to protect its reputation, reduce greenwashing risk, and communicate sustainability with confidence, we’d love you to join us.

📢 Become a signatory of The Anti-Greenwash Charter.
Shape the future of responsible communication and show stakeholders what honest, trusted sustainability leadership looks like.

Join the Charter →

Naked Paper Sets a New Standard for B Corp Consumer Brands

Naked Paper, a certified B Corp, has become the UK’s first subscription consumer brand to sign The Anti-Greenwash Charter.

Public trust in green claims is fragile. Research consistently shows that consumers are sceptical about the accuracy and clarity of sustainability messaging, and with good reason.

In a market where environmental credentials are easy to assert and hard to verify, the gap between what brands say and what they do has never been more costly.

Naked Paper, a UK-based subscription brand offering toilet paper and household tissue products, has chosen to close that gap. By becoming the first B Corp subscription consumer brand to sign The Anti-Greenwash Charter, it has made a formal, independently scrutinised commitment to transparent, accountable sustainability communications.

Governance, not gestures

The decision matters because of what it required. Naked Paper has conducted a full review of its content against the Competition and Markets Authority’s Green Claims Code, published a formal Green Claims Policy, delivered internal training on greenwashing risks and committed to independent assessments of how its policy is applied in practice. These are not gestures. They are governance.

Tom Whelan, Co-Founder of Naked Paper, was direct about the motivation:

“It’s unfortunately all too common to see corporate sustainability claims made without a shred of evidence. By signing the Anti-Greenwash Charter, we are committing to a reliable framework backed by third-party scrutiny.”

Why implementation is everything

For a subscription brand in constant dialogue with its customers, that scrutiny is both a discipline and a competitive advantage. Consumers are more likely to support brands they trust. Misleading claims carry growing regulatory and reputational risk.

Charlie Martin, CEO of The Anti-Greenwash Charter, noted what sets Naked Paper apart:

“What is notable about Naked Paper’s approach is the emphasis on implementation. Not just what is communicated, but how claims are reviewed, governed and embedded internally.”

Layered accountability

B Corp certification already sets a high bar. Charter signatory status adds a further layer of scrutiny focused specifically on communications. Together, they represent the kind of layered accountability that the current regulatory environment increasingly demands.

Naked Paper has shown what that looks like in practice. Other brands in the consumer subscription sector would do well to follow.

Sustainability Communications with Confidence

If your organisation wants to protect its reputation, reduce greenwashing risk, and communicate sustainability with confidence, we’d love you to join us.

📢 Become a signatory of The Anti-Greenwash Charter.
Shape the future of responsible communication and show stakeholders what honest, trusted sustainability leadership looks like.

Join the Charter →

Trust Is the KPI That Changes the Conversation

Greenhushing is not driven by apathy. It is driven by uncertainty. When organisations focus on trust as the outcome, communication becomes clearer, more consistent, and ultimately more credible.

Greenhushing is often misunderstood.

It is easy to assume that organisations stay quiet because they have something to hide, or because sustainability is not a priority. In most cases, neither is true.

The hesitation comes from a more practical concern. Organisations are unsure how their words will be received once they leave their control.

They are working with information that is still evolving. Progress that is real, but incomplete. Language that is expected to be precise, but often interpreted without context.

In that environment, communication carries risk.

So the instinct is to reduce exposure. To wait. To say less until the ground feels firmer.

This is not a failure of ambition. It is a response to uncertainty.

The Decision Behind the Silence

Inside organisations, sustainability communication rarely breaks down in a single moment. It slows gradually.

A team prepares an update. It reflects genuine progress, but also acknowledges complexity.

Questions follow. Is the evidence complete? Could the language be misinterpreted? Does this create unnecessary risk?

Each question is reasonable. Each reflects a different responsibility.

But together, they shift the decision.

The threshold for saying something becomes higher than the threshold for saying nothing.

Silence, in that context, is not strategic. It is the path of least resistance.

Why More Rules Do Not Solve It

The natural response to this tension has been to introduce more frameworks, more guidance, more disclosure requirements.

These have their place. They create structure and improve consistency.

But they do not resolve the underlying issue.

Because the challenge is not simply what organisations are required to say. It is how confident they feel in saying it.

You can increase the volume of reporting without increasing the quality of communication. You can meet disclosure requirements and still avoid explaining what matters.

Without trust, compliance becomes a ceiling rather than a foundation.

Reframing the Objective

The shift begins when organisations change what they are aiming for.

If the objective is to avoid criticism, the safest approach is restraint. If the objective is to build trust, the approach has to be different.

Trust is not built through perfection. It is built through consistency and clarity.

It comes from explaining decisions, not just outcomes. From acknowledging limitations, not just highlighting progress. From using language that reflects reality, even when that reality is still evolving.

This requires a different kind of judgement.

The question is no longer whether a statement is technically safe. It is whether it is meaningfully credible.

When Silence Becomes a Signal

For a time, saying less can feel like a way to manage risk.

But silence does not sit in isolation. It is interpreted.

When stakeholders cannot see how progress is unfolding, they fill the gaps themselves. When communication is limited to formal disclosures, it becomes difficult to understand intent, direction, or accountability.

Over time, the absence of communication begins to shape perception as much as the presence of it.

What was intended as caution starts to look like reluctance.

And at that point, the balance shifts. Silence no longer reduces risk. It creates it.

The Missing Link Is Consistency

Most organisations do not lack principles. They lack a consistent way to apply them.

One team may prioritise precision. Another may prioritise clarity. A third may focus on risk.

Without alignment, each message is reassessed from the beginning. Each decision is reopened.

This creates friction. It slows communication. And it often leads back to the same outcome: saying less.

Consistency is what turns good intent into reliable practice.

The Role of a Shared Standard

This is where an independent standard becomes valuable.

Not as a constraint, but as a point of reference.

The Anti-Greenwash Charter provides a framework grounded in four principles: Transparency, Accountability, Fairness and Honesty.

These principles do not eliminate judgement. They guide it.

They help organisations explain progress without overstating it. To acknowledge complexity without creating confusion. To communicate in a way that is both clear and credible.

Most importantly, they create alignment.

When teams are working from the same standard, decisions become more straightforward. The boundaries are clearer. The trade-offs are understood.

From Uncertainty to Confidence

When that structure is in place, something shifts.

Communication becomes less about avoiding risk and more about managing it intelligently.

Discussions become more focused because the objective is shared. Decisions become more efficient because the criteria are clear.

And confidence begins to build.

Not because uncertainty disappears, but because it is handled more openly.

This is what changes the role of communication.

It moves from being a point of tension to a source of credibility.

And in that shift, greenhushing begins to fall away. Not because organisations are told to share more, but because they have a clearer, more trusted way to do so.

Sustainability Communications with Confidence

If your organisation wants to protect its reputation, reduce greenwashing risk, and communicate sustainability with confidence, we’d love you to join us.

📢 Become a signatory of The Anti-Greenwash Charter.
Shape the future of responsible communication and show stakeholders what honest, trusted sustainability leadership looks like.

Join the Charter →

Building a Trust Strategy for Your Business.

Trust is one of the most valuable assets a business holds, yet many organisations still lack a clear strategy for how to build it through communication.

Trust has become one of the most valuable and most fragile assets a business holds.

Stakeholders are paying closer attention to what organisations say, how they say it, and whether it stands up to scrutiny. At the same time, many teams are navigating a familiar tension. Communicate too boldly, and risk being challenged. Hold back, and risk being overlooked.

This is the space between greenwash and greenhush.

Most organisations are not lacking intent. They are trying to do the right thing. What is often missing is a clear, structured approach to building trust through communication.

Start with Understanding, Not Assumptions

A trust strategy does not begin with messaging. It begins with insight.

Trust audits and stakeholder research give organisations a clear view of how they are currently perceived. Not how they believe they are perceived, but how they are actually understood by the audiences that matter.

This process helps uncover where trust is already strong, where questions remain, and where communication may be creating confusion or unintended scepticism.

It is a shift from internal perspective to external reality.

Without this foundation, even well intentioned communications can fail to land as expected.

Define the Principles Behind Your Communication

Trust becomes far more manageable when it is grounded in clear, shared principles.

The most credible organisations align their communication around four fundamentals:

• Transparency. Being open about both progress and limitations.
• Accountability. Taking responsibility for claims and commitments.
• Fairness. Communicating in a way that is balanced and not misleading.
• Honesty. Ensuring claims are accurate, clear, and evidence based.

These principles provide consistency across teams.

They create alignment between marketing, sustainability, legal, and leadership.

And they turn trust from an abstract ambition into something that can be applied in practice.

Turn Insight into Action

With clarity and principles in place, the strategy becomes operational.

Building trust is not about a single campaign or statement. It is the result of consistent, deliberate actions over time.

In practice, this often means refining how sustainability is communicated across the organisation. Messages become clearer, more precise, and better supported by evidence. Internal processes evolve, with stronger governance and clearer accountability for what is said and signed off.

Teams are equipped with the knowledge and confidence to communicate responsibly.

Different functions begin to work more closely together, reducing gaps between intention and execution.

Over time, this creates a noticeable shift. Communication becomes more consistent. Decision making becomes more confident. The organisation moves from uncertainty to clarity.

Support Your Approach with Independent Validation

Internal alignment is essential, but trust is ultimately earned externally.

Independent validation plays a crucial role in strengthening credibility. It shows that an organisation’s approach to communication is not only internally agreed, but also assessed against a recognised standard.

By aligning with the Anti Greenwash Charter, organisations demonstrate their commitment to responsible communication in a clear and credible way.

As signatories, they gain structured reviews, expert guidance, and recognition for the way they communicate.

More importantly, they gain an external benchmark that helps ensure their approach continues to meet high standards.

This creates an important shift. Confidence is no longer based solely on internal judgement. It is reinforced by independent validation.

Make Trust Visible

Trust is built through actions, but it grows when those actions are visible.

Clear signals help stakeholders recognise when communication has been developed responsibly.

They reduce ambiguity and make it easier to distinguish between claims that are well founded and those that are less robust.

Tools such as truMRK enable organisations to communicate this commitment openly. They provide a simple, recognisable way to show that claims have been developed in line with credible standards.

This visibility strengthens confidence. It helps stakeholders engage with information more easily and with greater trust.

From Uncertainty to Leadership

A trust strategy is not a one off initiative. It is an ongoing discipline that evolves as expectations, regulations, and understanding continue to develop.

When it is built on insight, guided by clear principles, and supported by independent validation, it becomes more than a risk management exercise.

It becomes a source of strength.

Organisations move from second guessing their communication to standing confidently behind it. From navigating uncertainty to setting a clear direction. From following expectations to helping shape them.

A More Trusted Future

Sustainability communication is entering a new phase.

One where credibility matters more than volume. Where clarity matters more than complexity. Where trust is earned through consistency, not claims.

The organisations that lead will be those that approach communication with the same rigour as they do their strategy.

Because in the end, trust is not built by what you say once.

It is built by what you can stand behind, consistently, over time.

Sustainability Communications with Confidence

If your organisation wants to protect its reputation, reduce greenwashing risk, and communicate sustainability with confidence, we’d love you to join us.

📢 Become a signatory of The Anti-Greenwash Charter.
Shape the future of responsible communication and show stakeholders what honest, trusted sustainability leadership looks like.

Join the Charter →

Why Australia’s Built Environment Is Rethinking Sustainability Communication.

A new industry report warns that developers, architects and manufacturers face a growing dilemma: say too much and risk greenwashing, say too little and risk losing trust. The findings also point to the growing role of voluntary initiatives, such as The Anti-Greenwash Charter, in helping organisations communicate sustainability with credibility.

For years, the built environment has been under pressure to build greener, design smarter, and reduce its environmental footprint.

Now it faces a new challenge: how to talk about sustainability without getting it wrong.

A new report, Australian Built Environment Communications Report: Navigating Sustainability Claims in an Era of Scrutiny, argues that the sector is entering a new phase where sustainability communication has become both essential and risky. As regulatory scrutiny intensifies and stakeholder expectations grow, organisations are finding themselves caught between two uncomfortable choices. They can exaggerate progress and risk accusations of greenwashing, or stay silent and risk accusations of greenhushing.

The report, produced following an industry roundtable with sustainability, legal, marketing and development leaders, paints a picture of a sector struggling to balance ambition with defensibility.

A sector under scrutiny

Across Australia, regulators have begun taking a tougher stance on environmental claims. Corporate sustainability messaging, once largely treated as aspirational branding, is now being examined through the lens of consumer protection and investor transparency.

For organisations in the built environment, that shift is particularly significant.

Buildings are responsible for a substantial share of global emissions, and the sector has been quick to adopt the language of net zero, low carbon materials and sustainable design.

But communicating these commitments, the report argues, is far from straightforward.

Sustainability claims often rely on complex modelling, projected performance, or supply chain data that may not yet be fully verified. A development might promise lower operational emissions or reduced embodied carbon, but the final outcome can depend on design revisions, contractor decisions, tenant behaviour or evolving measurement methods.

That complexity, the report suggests, creates fertile ground for misunderstandings, or overly simplified claims that risk being misleading.

The ambition versus defensibility dilemma

One of the report’s most striking conclusions is that sustainability communication now sits at the intersection of marketing, legal compliance and technical performance.

Organisations want to demonstrate leadership, but the evidence required to substantiate those claims is becoming more demanding. As a result, many companies are navigating what the report describes as an ambition versus defensibility paradox. There is pressure to communicate bold sustainability goals while ensuring every statement can withstand scrutiny.

The result, according to industry participants, is often internal tension. Sustainability teams want to share progress and drive change. Marketing teams want clear messaging. Legal teams are increasingly cautious about what can safely be said.

In some cases, the safest option becomes saying very little.

That phenomenon, known as greenhushing, has become a growing concern globally. The report argues that while excessive caution may reduce regulatory risk, it also limits transparency and makes it harder for stakeholders to identify genuine sustainability leaders.

Why the built environment is uniquely exposed

While greenwashing concerns affect many industries, the report suggests the built environment faces particular challenges.

Construction and development rely on long supply chains, complex procurement processes and evolving technical standards. Sustainability claims often involve data from multiple organisations, from material manufacturers to engineering consultants.

Even concepts that are widely discussed in the industry, such as embodied carbon, remain difficult to communicate clearly to non specialist audiences.

Measuring and comparing carbon impacts requires sophisticated lifecycle analysis and assumptions about baselines, which can vary significantly between projects.

Certification schemes such as Green Star and NABERS provide useful signals, but they do not always tell the full story. A design certification, for example, may reflect a building’s intended performance rather than its operational reality.

As the report notes, this gap between design intent and actual outcomes can make sustainability messaging particularly sensitive.

The internal governance challenge

Another theme running through the report is that sustainability communication is rarely owned by a single team.

Claims about environmental performance often pass through multiple departments before they reach the public.

Sustainability specialists, engineers, communications teams, executives and legal advisors all play a role. Each brings a different perspective and risk tolerance.

Without clear governance structures, the report argues, organisations can struggle to maintain consistency between technical evidence and public messaging.

In practice, this can lead to gaps between what project teams know and what marketing materials say, or to cautious messaging that strips out useful context altogether.

The report suggests that stronger internal processes, including evidence libraries, claim inventories and structured approval systems, could help organisations manage that complexity.

Sustainability Communications with Confidence

If your organisation wants to protect its reputation, reduce greenwashing risk, and communicate sustainability with confidence, we’d love you to join us.

📢 Become a signatory of The Anti-Greenwash Charter.
Shape the future of responsible communication and show stakeholders what honest, trusted sustainability leadership looks like.

Join the Charter →