In 2008, I co-authored an article with Jerry Stifelman, my business partner at the time, entitled “Greenhushing Doesn’t Help Anyone: Why Green Businesses Should Speak Up.” A competing set of trends prompted the article.
First was a rise in so-called greenwashing, or deceptive and inaccurate efforts to market “green” products. Sometimes the greenwashing was blatant, with outright distortions or misrepresentations. And sometimes it was subtle, or even inadvertent. But either way, it ran the risk of misleading consumers and causing a backlash because of a distrust of “green” claims.
Equally troubling, though, was an opposite tendency we were beginning to see among our clients— true green standard-bearers who were unwilling or reluctant to promote their efforts.
Read more: Sustainability has evolved. So have we.
We dubbed this phenomenon “greenhushing.” Even though humility might be seen as virtuous in many cases, we argued that in this instance it was actually setting sustainability back. Our argument was two-fold:
A decade and a half later, greenhushing is clearly having a moment. It’s entered the academic lexicon. Publications including the New York Times, Adweek, Bloomberg and Mother Jones have written about it. And a 2022 survey of major businesses by a Swiss consulting firm revealed that one in four companies were planning to “go green and then go dark.”
For sustainability to become truly sustainable, we desperately need companies to communicate truthfully and ambitiously about its importance.
Given the very real reputational, legal, and litigation risks of greenwashing, it’s perhaps understandable that some companies are becoming reticent to communicate on sustainability. If we’re going to get called out for claiming to “go green,” the thinking goes, then maybe we should stay silent and continue our work in private. And in my role as Director of Communications Strategy here at thinkPARALLAX, I have heard from several clients that their companies are reticent about speaking too loudly about their sustainability efforts—often for fear of inviting litigation or even regulatory risk if something could be perceived as being misrepresented.
But, there are several problems with this approach:
OK, so hopefully we’ve established that greenhushing is ultimately self-defeating. But what should we be doing instead?
Read more: How to embed sustainability into the structure of your business
“Greenblushing:” or the art of keeping it real
Around the time we published the original greenhushing article, Jerry Stifelman and I were working for Larry’s Coffee, a fair trade, organic coffee roaster. We had recently launched a supposedly biodegradable bag, which won a huge amount of positive acclaim in industry press and from consumers. We quickly discovered, however, that the reality sold to us by our suppliers was not at all what it was cracked up to be. Not only did the bag not biodegrade in the landfill as promised, but activists and packaging experts argued that, even if it did, this was not the environmental benefit that we claimed it to be.
Larry quickly nixed the bag. But rather than simply quietly backtracking on our commitment, we chose to amplify the conversation so that others could learn from our mistake—creating a short video and handing the mic to our critics.
I’ve come to think of this video as an example of greenblushing—or transparently sharing your challenges and positioning yourself as a good faith participant in our collective journey to sustainability.
To be clear, not every company is going to actively broadcast its mistakes. And legal departments will have a lot to say about anything that could open them up to lawsuits. But every company can and should lean into a more truthful form of communication when it comes to sustainability. In our experience, that means:
Here’s my hypothesis: While consumers might be concerned about environmental and social topics, they are not necessarily demanding perfection. Whether it’s riding a bike on car-centric streets, avoiding flying when trains are unreliable, or eating vegan when the world caters to carnivores, we know that living a perfect green lifestyle is hard in a system that encourages the opposite.
Read more: CSRD Readiness—Why U.S. companies should act now
The same is true of business. In fact, turning around the global, fossil fueled juggernaut of commerce is going to take decades of concerted work by everybody—and no single individual, company, or institution can instantaneously shift into the perfect green future.
Imperfection is inevitable. And it is deeply human. Not only do consumers and stakeholders understand this. But they relate to it. This creates common ground. And common ground is where communications can really come alive. Whether it’s providing sustainability-focused sales trainings or employee engagements, unpacking detailed ESG reports into consumer-facing communications plans, or helping marketing departments establish a clear set of anti-greenwashing guardrails, our goal at thinkPARALLAX is to make sure that our customers are empowered to not just report on their progress—but to speak loudly, proudly, and accurately about that progress too.
As we argued back in the day, greenhushing doesn’t help anyone. Besides which, there are far too many interesting and important stories out there for any of us to stay silent.
Need help evolving your sustainability communications? We’re here to help. Reach out to book a meeting with one of our sustainability experts anytime.