What If Sustainability Communication Actually Worked?

How better communication could unlock faster decisions, stronger trust, and real climate progress.

Imagine a world where every sustainability claim was clear, honest and easy to understand. No vague promises. No exaggerated headlines. Just straightforward information that people could trust.

In that world, businesses would still set ambitious goals, but they would speak about them openly and with evidence. Consumers would know which brands to believe. Investors would see where to put their money. Governments would have the facts they need to shape policy. And decisions could be made faster, with more confidence.

This future is possible. It starts with changing how we communicate.

“When communication is clear, honest and consistent, everything else moves faster. Good decisions depend on good information,” says Charlie Martin, Founder and CEO of The Anti-Greenwash Charter.

From Confusion to Clarity

Right now, sustainability messages are often confusing. Some sound too good to be true. Others are so cautious that they say nothing at all. The result is uncertainty.

When people do not know what to believe, they delay decisions. They stay silent. They hold back. And that slows down progress.

Now imagine if communication followed a clear, shared standard. Every claim would be backed by evidence. Language would be consistent and easy to follow. Good work would be easier to recognise.

With better communication, trust would grow. And with trust, action becomes possible.

“Greenwash creates distrust. Greenhush creates silence. Neither helps anyone. What we need is confident, credible communication that earns trust and supports action,” says Charlie.

Better Decisions, Quicker Progress

Clear communication does more than build trust. It helps everyone move faster.

If investors had reliable information, they could support companies making real change. If governments could see what businesses were actually doing, they could set better rules. If consumers could understand sustainability claims quickly, they could make better choices.

This kind of clarity would help the best ideas rise faster. It would reduce hesitation. It would reward action over noise.

“Sustainability leaders are often held back by a lack of clarity in the market. We need to shift the culture so that strong communication supports strong action,” says Charlie.

Trust Is the Foundation

We often talk about building new systems to solve the climate crisis. Cleaner energy. Better transport. Greener materials. But we also need to build something else. We need to build trust.

Trust is what allows collaboration. It helps people take risks. It supports long-term thinking. And it creates the space for honest conversations.

When organisations follow a clear communication standard, they show they are serious. They make it easier for others to believe in their progress. And they encourage more open, confident leadership.

A Better Future Starts With Better Comms

This is not just about avoiding greenwash. It is about creating a culture where honesty is valued. Where strong communication supports real action. And where trust becomes the default, not the exception.

The Anti-Greenwash Charter exists to make this future possible. We provide a clear standard for responsible communication. We help organisations speak with confidence, reduce risk and earn lasting trust.

“When we raise the standard of communication, we raise the standard of action. That’s how we create lasting change,” says Charlie.

Because when we use better comms, we create better outcomes. And that is how real change becomes realistic.

Communicate About Sustainability 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 →

The Biggest Greenwashing Fines of 2025 and What They Teach Us.

What this year’s biggest fines reveal about the future of sustainability communication.

This year has seen a clear shift in how regulators deal with misleading sustainability claims. Around the world, authorities are handing out record-breaking fines and sending a strong message. If you make green claims, they need to be accurate, clear, and backed by evidence.

Below are three of the biggest greenwashing fines in 2025 so far. Each case highlights the risks of getting sustainability communication wrong and the growing importance of honesty and clarity.

1. DWS fined €25 million in Germany

In April, German prosecutors fined asset manager DWS €25 million for overstating its ESG credentials. The company described itself as a leader in ESG and claimed that sustainability was built into its investment approach. But investigators found that these claims did not match how the company actually operated.

This is one of the largest greenwashing fines in the financial sector so far. It shows that even investment firms are being held to account for the words they use.

Key takeaway: If you say you are a leader, you need strong evidence. Avoid big claims unless they are backed by real action and data.

2. Shein fined €1 million in Italy

Fast fashion brand Shein was fined €1 million by the Italian Competition Authority for misleading environmental messaging. This followed a larger €40 million fine in France for similar issues.

In Italy, Shein promoted its “evoluSHEIN by design” collection as sustainable. But regulators found the claims were vague and unclear. Some claims about recyclability and circular production were also found to be false. The company’s climate targets were criticised for lacking evidence and not matching recent performance.

Key takeaway: Avoid using broad green terms like “eco” or “sustainable” unless you clearly explain what they mean. Climate targets should be realistic and based on up-to-date data.

3. Active Super fined A$10.5 million in Australia

In early 2025, Australia’s Federal Court fined superannuation fund Active Super 10.5 million Australian dollars. The fund claimed to exclude certain industries, but it continued to invest in them. This included companies involved in fossil fuels and controversial weapons.

The court also ordered Active Super to publish a public notice about the fine. This shows that the consequences can be both financial and reputational.

Key takeaway: What you say in public must match what you do behind the scenes. Gaps between messaging and reality can lead to serious consequences.

What these cases tell us

Across all three cases, some clear patterns are emerging:

• Every sector is being looked at. It is not just oil and gas. Finance, fashion, and consumer brands are all under the spotlight.

• Vague language is risky. Words like “green,” “eco-friendly,” and “sustainable” need clear meaning and proof.

• Targets must be backed by action. Saying you aim to reach net zero is not enough. Regulators now check if your recent actions support that goal.

• Fines are not just financial. Some companies are required to issue public corrections. The damage can be long-lasting.

• A fine in one country can raise questions in others. This is especially true for global brands.

How the Anti-Greenwash Charter helps

These cases show how easy it is for even well-meaning organisations to get caught out. The standards for sustainability communication are rising quickly. The Anti-Greenwash Charter helps companies meet those standards with confidence.

Here is how the Charter supports its signatories:

• Independent review. We help you check claims before they go live, so you can avoid greenwashing risks.

• Clear standards. All messaging is measured against four key principles: Transparency, Accountability, Fairness, and Honesty.

• Ongoing support. We offer more than one-time reviews. We work with you as your strategy and communications evolve.

• Learning community. Signatories learn from each other’s experience, so you can stay ahead of emerging risks.

• Trusted signal. Being a signatory shows your stakeholders that your claims are independently reviewed and verified.

If your organisation is serious about building trust through clear and honest communication, the Charter can help.

Communicate About Sustainability 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 Sustainability and Responsible Communication Aren’t the Same Thing.

Why communication standards matter as much as, if not more than, sustainability performance itself.

In the public imagination, sustainability and responsible communication are often fused into one seamless virtue. A company with a gleaming net zero pledge, a biodegradable packaging line, or a glossy CSR report is assumed not only to be a leader in environmental performance but also a beacon of truth in how it speaks. Conversely, an organisation lagging on climate targets or struggling to decarbonise is quickly judged as a poor communicator, untrustworthy by default.

But the reality is more complicated, and far more revealing of the cultural blind spots in how we judge corporate integrity.

Sustainability ≠ Honesty

A business can operate on the cutting edge of sustainability and still be deeply irresponsible in its communications. In fact, the pressure to live up to its own halo can incentivise obfuscation. The more a brand markets itself as “sustainable,” the greater the reputational risk if the claim falters.

This is precisely why the UK Competition and Markets Authority forced undertakings from ASOS, Boohoo and George at Asda in 2024: these retailers had invested in “conscious” or “responsible” lines, but their claims were too vague, too broad, too easy to misinterpret. They weren’t being penalised for failing to act on sustainability, but for the language they chose to wrap it in.

The same dynamic played out in aviation, when Virgin Atlantic proudly trumpeted the “100% sustainable” credentials of a transatlantic flight fuelled partly by biofuels. The Advertising Standards Authority banned the ad, not because the airline wasn’t pursuing decarbonisation, but because the phrasing implied a level of environmental perfection that science simply couldn’t support. Here, innovation was real. But communication was misleading.

These aren’t isolated lapses. In a global survey, nearly six in ten executives admitted their companies had overstated sustainability efforts. The most climate-progressive firms may well be at greatest risk, precisely because the temptation to exaggerate is highest where there are reputations to defend.

Unsustainable ≠ Irresponsible

Equally, being less sustainable does not automatically make a communicator dishonest. Many carbon-intensive industries – from cement to aviation – face barriers to rapid decarbonisation that no amount of rhetoric can sweep away. Yet some are now speaking with unusual candour about their limits.

Consider those oil and gas firms facing lawsuits not for inaction per se, but for communications that overreached. Santos in Australia was sued for promoting a “net zero plan” that leaned on unproven technologies and implied compatibility with gas expansion. By contrast, companies that admit openly that their models remain misaligned with Paris goals, and that fundamental trade-offs persist, can paradoxically build more trust than peers with bolder, vaguer slogans.

Trust, after all, is built not on performance alone but on the willingness to narrate imperfection. When an airline acknowledges that sustainable aviation fuels remain scarce, or a retailer admits that recycled fibres still represent a fraction of its overall volume, it signals a kind of integrity that consumers, and regulators, are increasingly primed to reward.

The Charter’s Principle: Integrity Before Image

For signatories of The Anti-Greenwash Charter, this distinction matters. Our mission is not to crown the “greenest” operator, but to demand honesty in the way every operator communicates. Communication is an ethical act in its own right, separate from operational performance.

Responsible communication means:

• Accuracy over aspiration: framing sustainability claims in verifiable, evidence-based language.

• Transparency over perfection: admitting limits, trade-offs, and ongoing challenges.

• Context over slogans: placing claims in proportion to overall impact, not cherry-picking the best statistic.

These principles apply equally to a retailer with a recycled capsule line and to a heavy industrial player locked into long-term emissions trajectories.

Why This Distinction Matters

If we continue to conflate sustainability with responsible communication, we risk two dangers. First, we allow high-performing companies to overstate their case and escape scrutiny. The CMA’s recent actions show just how tempting and routine that overstatement can be. Second, we delegitimise candid organisations whose very honesty may be their greatest act of responsibility.

RepRisk data suggests greenwashing incidents may be declining in number globally, but those that remain are more severe, more systemic, and more damaging. That is not just a quirk of corporate PR; it is the logical outcome of confusing sustainability with honesty, and rewarding only the appearance of perfection.

The lesson is stark: trust is not built on how sustainable you are. It is built on how truthful you are. And in an age of mounting climate urgency, truth may be the most sustainable currency of all.

Communicate About Sustainability 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 I Left the Agency World to Build Trust in Sustainability.

After nearly a decade running an agency, I realised the marketing tools I’d relied on weren’t enough to tackle the growing trust crisis in sustainability. So I stepped away, and started something new.

For most of my career, I worked in marketing. I ran an agency called Gusto, and we helped purpose-led brands shape their narratives, build campaigns, and communicate sustainability in ways that felt bold, clear, and creative. I believed in the work we were doing. I still do.

But over time, I started to feel uncomfortable.

Not because clients weren’t committed. They were. But because the space we were working in, sustainability communications, was getting noisier, riskier, and more fragile by the day. The pressure to simplify complex issues, to lead with impact, to wrap everything in a perfect story… it didn’t always line up with what was actually true.

And when you work in comms, you see that tension up close.

We’d be helping a brand do something genuinely positive, and yet the messaging still felt vulnerable. Were we overstating it? Was the claim going to stand up? Had we crossed an invisible line between confidence and compliance? The truth is, even the most well-intentioned campaigns felt like they were walking a tightrope.

It became increasingly clear to me that trust – in sustainability claims, in brands, in our role as communicators – was breaking down. And we didn’t have the tools to fix it.

The Brief That Changed Everything

The idea for The Anti-Greenwash Charter started with a client project at Gusto. The company was preparing for B Corp certification and wanted help ensuring their sustainability communications were solid – not just from a storytelling perspective, but from a credibility one. They weren’t asking for creative. They were asking for structure. A way to communicate honestly, with confidence, without falling foul of the UK’s new Green Claims Code.

That question stuck with me.

So we tried something new. We helped them develop a Green Claims Policy – a short, transparent document that laid out how their sustainability messaging worked: who was involved, what checks were in place, how evidence was reviewed, and how uncertainty was handled. It wasn’t flashy, but it worked. Internally, it aligned teams. Externally, it gave people something real to trust.

It was the kind of thing I hadn’t seen before, but knew more organisations needed.

Choosing to Step Away

That one policy changed my direction. I realised I didn’t just want to keep creating campaigns. I wanted to help build a new standard – one where sustainability communications weren’t just compliant, but credible. Where communicators weren’t left guessing. Where organisations could lead with integrity, even when their story was still evolving.

So in early 2022, I began to step away from agency life and started The Anti-Greenwash Charter.

The goal was simple: to give people a clear, independent way to approach sustainability communications with honesty and rigour. Since then, the Charter has grown into a not-for-profit initiative supporting organisations with structured reviews, guidance, and a set of principles that take the pressure off guesswork and greenwash alike.

What I’ve Learned

I didn’t leave Gusto because I stopped believing in communication. I left because I wanted it to mean more.

Marketing is still a powerful tool. But when it comes to sustainability, we need more than compelling messages – we need systems that back up those messages with truth. Without that, trust erodes. And when trust erodes, we lose the very progress we’re trying to communicate.

Since launching the Charter, I’ve also been inspired to found truMRK, a service that independently verifies sustainability reports – checking that claims are not only clear, but evidence-based and aligned with regulation. I also continue to host a podcast, The Responsible Edge, where I speak to people across sectors who are trying to lead responsibly in a world that doesn’t always make that easy.

All of this is driven by the same mission: to rebuild trust in how we talk about sustainability. To shift the culture of comms from performance to principle. To support the people – especially in marketing and ESG – who are so often caught in the middle, trying to do the right thing with imperfect tools.

This Work Isn’t About Perfection

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that responsible communication isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about being transparent about the process. Being willing to say “this is what we know, this is what we’re working on, and this is how we’re making decisions.”

That’s what the Charter helps organisations do. It’s not a badge or a shortcut. It’s a commitment to getting it right – or at least, being honest when we’re not there yet.

And I think that’s what people want. Not perfection. Not green gloss. Just clarity, honesty, and a bit more courage in the way we tell our stories.

Communicate About Sustainability 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 →

The Anti-Greenwash Charter: From One Brief to a Shared Commitment.

How a simple client challenge became a growing, global movement for progressive sustainability communication

Sustainability is one of the most important conversations of our time, but also one of the hardest to get right. For years, organisations have struggled with how to talk about their environmental and social impact without overselling, oversimplifying, or retreating into silence out of fear of getting it wrong.

On one side is greenwashing, the exaggeration or distortion of progress. On the other is greenhushing, the choice to stay silent, even when meaningful work is happening.

It’s in this space, between overstatement and understatement, that The Anti-Greenwash Charter was born.

But it didn’t begin as a campaign or a grand industry initiative. It started with a single client brief.

A Real Client, a Real Problem

Back in 2021, a client of our agency partner, Gusto, was preparing for B Corp certification. They wanted their sustainability messaging to reflect the rigour of their internal efforts. They were looking for clarity and confidence, not just compliance.

At the same time, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority had launched its Green Claims Code, putting brands on notice: misleading or vague environmental claims were no longer just bad practice, they were a legal risk.

That combination of pressure and principle led to a new idea.

“We were seeing the same tension everywhere,” says Charlie Martin, founder and CEO of The Anti-Greenwash Charter. “Organisations genuinely trying to do the right thing were afraid to speak up. Others, less careful, were making bold claims without the substance to back them. We needed a way through the noise.”

So the team asked: what if organisations published how they approach sustainability communications? Not just what they say, but how they decide what’s fair to say?

A Straightforward but Powerful Idea

The result was the first Green Claims Policy, a public statement setting out how an organisation manages its sustainability communications: how claims are checked, who’s involved, what standards are used, and where there’s still work to do.

It wasn’t flashy. But it was grounded. Honest. And incredibly useful.

“We weren’t giving people a script,” Charlie explains. “We were helping them show their working. That’s what builds trust, not the slogan, but the system behind it.”

For that first B Corp client, the policy became a cornerstone, internally and externally. It helped align teams, meet legal guidance, and communicate with confidence.

Soon, others followed.

From One Policy to a Charter

Word of the idea spread – first quietly, then more widely. More organisations wanted to develop Green Claims Policies. More teams wanted guidance. What had started as a single solution became a conversation. A community. And then, a shared commitment.

The Anti-Greenwash Charter was shaped by that energy. It’s now a growing alliance of organisations who want to raise the bar for sustainability communications -brands, agencies, campaigners and consultants committed to saying what they mean, and meaning what they say.

“It wasn’t a top-down initiative,” says Charlie. “It came from people in the work – marketers, sustainability leads, legal teams – who were all trying to do this better. We just gave it a name, and a framework.”

Why It Matters Now

The stakes are only getting higher. Public trust is fragile. Regulatory pressure is increasing. And the climate crisis is unfolding in real time.

In this context, the old playbook – smooth the edges, tell the best version of the story, avoid saying too much – doesn’t hold up.

But going quiet isn’t the answer either.

“Greenhushing is becoming as dangerous as greenwashing,” says Charlie. “If responsible organisations feel they can’t talk about their progress, we lose momentum. And that’s bad for everyone.”

The Charter offers a different path. One built on transparency, process, and shared responsibility. It doesn’t ask for perfection – it asks for accountability.

It helps organisations speak honestly, even when the story is still in progress.

What Comes Next

Since launching, The Anti-Greenwash Charter has helped a number of organisations publish Green Claims Policies, align teams, and rethink how sustainability is communicated. It continues to grow with input from legal experts, regulators, campaigners and the people doing the daily work of marketing and messaging.

“What makes this powerful is how practical it is,” says Charlie. “We’re not just pointing out the problems – we’re building tools to help fix them. And we’re doing it together.”

The Charter isn’t a badge. It’s a collective mindset. A commitment to open, accurate, and meaningful communication about sustainability.

It started with one client asking one honest question.

And it’s becoming a shared answer, shaped by those ready to lead with clarity and care.

Communicate About Sustainability 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 →