Marketing & Communications

Five Questions Brands Should Ask Before Joining the Next Big Sustainability Conversation

In a climate where stakeholders are quick to question empty corporate messaging, companies need more than a timely sustainability story; they need proof, relevance and a reason to speak.

By Vanessa Horwell | Published 2 hours ago | About a 5 minute read

Image: Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

In sustainability communications, timing matters. Earth Month, Climate Week, COP and other major industry events create openings to discuss responsible business practices and give companies a timely way to connect their progress to the moments already shaping stakeholder attention.

But those openings come with greater scrutiny. Political polarization, ESG backlash and rising skepticism around corporate climate claims have changed the conditions in which sustainability messages are received. Capgemini’s 2025 sustainability trends report found that 62% of consumers believe companies are engaged in greenwashing, up from 52% in 2024 and 33% in 2023.

Yet staying quiet during those moments carries its own risks. According to GlobeScan, as brands have become more reserved in their climate and sustainability messaging amid the backlash, fewer consumers are seeing those messages and consequently, trust in them has continued to decline.

For companies with meaningful progress to communicate, the answer is to treat high-attention moments as credibility checkpoints, using them to assess whether the business is prepared to communicate with enough evidence, specificity and transparency to withstand greater scrutiny.

These five questions can help companies make that assessment before they speak.

1. What are we prepared to prove?

Many climate and sustainability narratives lean on broad language around commitments, ambitions, journeys, leadership, vision and transformation. These may look great and convincing on paper, but they do little to build trust on their own.

Trust starts with proof. Companies communicating their progress need to show what has changed, when it changed, how it was measured and what business, environmental or social outcomes followed. Depending on the claim, emissions data, waste-reduction metrics, lifecycle analysis, third-party certification, audited reporting, supply-chain traceability and operational case studies can help substantiate the claim.

An organization that can demonstrate how its packaging redesign reduced material use, a sourcing change improved traceability, or a circular model created measurable resource and cost benefits draws a direct line between sustainability and business value.

If this type of evidence isn’t ready, then neither is the message.

2. What does the moment change about stakeholder expectations?

High-attention sustainability moments are not interchangeable. A climate-tech company speaking during COP may be expected to connect its work to policy, finance or systemic decarbonization. A retailer speaking ahead of new packaging regulations may need to show operational readiness. A travel company discussing climate resilience during a summer of extreme weather may need to address adaptation, customer safety and destination impacts together.

Each moment creates different expectations and communications strategies should be shaped by those expectations. The message should reflect the work the company is actively doing or simply reflects the desire to be part of the moment and a reactive need to be visible.
That distinction helps companies move beyond reactive campaigns and build communications around relevance and timeliness rather than visibility alone.

3. Are the right teams aligned before we go public?

Sustainability claims often touch many parts of the business, from legal, finance and procurement to product design, reporting and customer experience. Without internal alignment, the same claim can be interpreted quite differently across the organization, making it harder to substantiate, defend or act on.

A company describing new packaging as “more sustainable,” for example, needs to know exactly what that phrase means. Is it using less material? More recycled content? Lower-emissions production? Improved recyclability? Reduced shipping weight? Maybe it’s all of these; however, each answer depends on different data, different teams and different trade-offs.

That alignment becomes especially important as regulators raise the standard for environmental claims. In jurisdictions such as the EU, rules like the Empowering Consumers Directive are designed to protect consumers from vague or unsupported environmental claims. In that context, credible sustainability communication depends on whether a company can marry what it says externally with what it measures, manages and can verify internally.

4. What can we discuss transparently?

Credibility doesn’t require perfection. In fact, when it comes to sustainability messaging, claims of perfect progress can undermine trust. The most serious sustainability challenges are operationally complex and rarely solved through a single initiative.

That complexity should be discussed publicly, not hidden or treated as a weakness. A retailer working to reduce the impact of its supply chain, for example, may be improving packaging, expanding resale, reducing returns, working with suppliers on emissions data and rethinking logistics at the same time. Not all those efforts will move at the same pace, and some may expose trade-offs around cost, convenience, product availability or customer expectations.

Explaining what the company has learned, where progress has been slower than expected and how it is adjusting may offer a much more credible contribution than one that only highlights finished successes.

5. Is this our moment to join?

This final question may be the most important. Not every sustainability moment needs every brand’s participation.

If the only reason to speak is that a date appears on the calendar, the company may be better served by staying quiet, in contrast to what I wrote earlier. Participation should be earned by relevance, evidence and usefulness. Does the company have data that adds something to the conversation? Can it offer a perspective that helps the sector move forward? Is there a lesson others can apply?

When the answer is yes, high-attention moments can create an opportunity to strengthen trust and brand value. When the answer is no, forced participation can have the opposite effect, making sustainability messaging come across as opportunistic and inauthentic rather than substantive and genuine.

Remember that not every sustainability moment needs a response, even if there’s an opening in the calendar. The ones worth joining, or even driving, are those where the company can add real value and leadership, not add to the noise.