Nothing We Do Is Sustainable: How Transparency Beats Persuasion

Trust, without the theatre

A candid conversation with Charlie Martin on greenwashing, greenhushing, and how transparency, evidence and context rebuild trust in sustainability communications.

In this episode, we explore why sustainability communication is breaking down, and how organisations can rebuild trust by being specific, evidence-led, and brutally honest about what still is not working. 

From greenwashing to greenhushing, Charlie lays out a practical blueprint for responsible comms, and makes the case that transparency is not just safer, it is the only way progress becomes shareable, learnable, and real.

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Transcript

PRE-INTRO

Charlie:

No organisation is sustainable. That doesn’t exist. The first thing you need to do to liberate yourself, to speak confidently about the things that you are doing well, is be completely transparent and upfront about the things that you’re not doing so well.

INTRO

Becky:

Hello, and welcome to the No Bull Ideacast. I’m Becky Holland. Season 4 is all about inside out impact. Real change happens within organisations, not just in their statements, or their strategy.

Today, we’re exploring one of the most fragile parts of that equation: trust. How do you talk about sustainability honestly, without overselling programmes? And without staying silent out of fear?

To help me unpack this, I’m joined by somebody who’s made this his life’s work. Charlie Martin is the founder of the Anti-Greenwash Charter and TruMark, two initiatives focused on raising the standard of sustainability communications, and helping organisations avoid both greenwashing and, increasingly, greenhushing.

He’s also the host of The Responsible Edge, where I recently joined him as a guest. In this conversation, we get into the psychology of trust, how organisations communicate with integrity, why context matters as much as claims, and the uncomfortable truth that no organisation is perfectly sustainable, and that’s okay. What matters is transparency.

Charlie Martin, welcome to the show. Let’s dive in.

Becky:

So before we dig in, I want to understand a little bit more about you and what makes you, you. When you’re not at work, where will we find you? What will you be doing?

Charlie:

Oh goodness. This is going to sound really tragic and boring, but I’m a gym-going, dog-walking, sauna person. Those are my three angles.

I was speaking to a friend the other day and I did say that work has got to the point now where I’m getting dangerously boring in all other aspects of life. But I find what I do so all-encompassing, and so exciting and creative and enjoyable, that work does take over a lot.

Becky:

Well, I guess that’s a good way to be. I often say you spend a large part of your life at work, you might as well enjoy it. And if you’ve got that balance right, then good for you, I’d say.

Charlie:

Thanks, Becky.

Becky:

I’d like to say I’ve never had a gym-going, dog-walking person on the show before, but I fear that’s not going to be true.

You built a successful career doing something different before you moved into the world you’re in now, didn’t you? Explain a little bit about how you came to this point. Was there a specific moment that made you rethink the direction you were going in, and made you feel you wanted to bring more purpose and accountability into the way organisations communicate?

Charlie:

Absolutely, yeah. And you’ve nailed that, Becky. I need to package you up and take you around to all of my prospecting calls, because you’ve introduced me in a far better way than I can.

So, my chapters. My parents have always been entrepreneurial. They’ve always run businesses. I always knew I wanted to run a business, and as a younger person I sort of viewed that as the end goal. I just wanted to run a business, and I hadn’t really thought beyond that.

Then, as a fairly bolshy 22 or 23-year-old, me and my friend decided to start our own marketing and comms agency. We didn’t really know what we were doing, but we just went for it. It felt good to be doing something exciting and living my dream at that age.

I ran Gusto for about 10 years. As we got towards the back end of my time there, we started working with more organisations in the impact and purpose space. I think I was naturally drawn to those organisations and those people.

Then it properly pivoted in 2021. We had two clients who came knocking with what we thought was a fascinating brief. It was inspired by the CMA’s Green Claims Code, published in early 2021.

The brief was: we know we’re responsible in our communications, but how do we present that and prove it to stakeholders, to reassure them that the content they’re engaging with is fully substantiated and has real integrity?

I just thought that was an amazing brief. There are certain moments where something lands in front of you and you think, wow, that’s a really interesting challenge.

The question we posed was: how would you prove that an organisation was a responsible corporate communicator? That was the starting point for what became the Anti-Greenwash Charter.

At that stage I decided, I’ve sold plenty of stuff on behalf of clients, I’ve helped organisations grow, but I want to do something really purposeful with my time. This felt like the thing to do.

We started the Anti-Greenwash Charter as a side project at the beginning of 2022, and then I went full time on it from mid-2023.

Becky:

If you’re somebody, or you’re in an organisation, that feels like you’re having some kind of impact in the world, positive or negative, you have to make a decision about what you’re going to share and what you’re not going to share.

Increasingly people want to talk about what they’re doing for positive impact, whether that’s climate, people, governance, local community. You want to shout from the rooftops, we’ve done this amazing thing.

But if you shout too loudly, people start questioning it, and they ask you to justify it. Suddenly you find yourself backpedalling and it becomes complicated. We’ve all seen scandals where organisations have intentionally or unintentionally said things that aren’t true.

Now you have greenhushing, where people stop talking about what they’ve done because of the risk they’ll be held to account for it.

So you’ve got this weird gap: do we talk, do we not talk? Trust has become really fragile. What’s your view on that, and what behaviour shifts do we need?

Charlie:

Brilliant observation, and a brilliant question. There’s a lot in what you said.

One thing that doesn’t get highlighted enough is the implication of greenhushing. If we look at the collective challenges we have around climate, the environment, and social issues, and we create conditions where organisations don’t feel confident to share progress and provide peer-to-peer learning, we slow down the learning curve and the innovation curve required to address these issues.

We’re shooting ourselves in the foot in terms of collective learning.

People often focus on the local level: if you don’t communicate, your competitor does, you might be seen as less trusted or less valued. But the collective concern is where I draw my attention.

On trust, it’s understandable why organisations are sensitive to getting it wrong. We live in a strange age of fake news, and terms like “my truth”, where consensus on what is or isn’t trustworthy becomes difficult to establish. It’s really hard out there.

So what can be done? This is where the charter is, for us, a small but significant blueprint for improving collective standards of communication. If organisations uphold those standards, they can be more confident in sharing their story, not just what’s working well, but also what’s not working so well.

That’s at the crux of the future of sustainability comms.

Becky:

When we talk about behaviour change, we talk about capability, opportunity, and motivation. Often the motivation is there, but people don’t necessarily have the skills, and they don’t necessarily have the opportunity. I feel like what you’re doing is building that capability and giving those opportunities.

Tell me what the Anti-Greenwash Charter actually is, and what problem you set out to solve. Was it just a response to that brief, or something more?

Charlie:

It was very much inspired by that brief, because at the heart of what the charter requires its signatories to do are the same three initiatives we put in front of those clients back in 2021.

We require organisations to do three things.

First, greenwash awareness training. Understanding and appreciation of the issues throughout marketing, comms, and even sales is essential.

We did a piece of research four years ago which found that the most common channel through which people felt they experienced misinformation and greenwashing was through engagements with sales agents. That was specific to built environment and construction, but it was a fascinating insight.

So we train across key areas like comms, sales, and marketing. We also have a C-suite programme because senior leadership need to understand the issues and how to mitigate misinformation.

Second, we require a static or evergreen content review. You take your website, brochures, anything that stays uniform, and check it against relevant regulation. Make sure your language and claims align with the regulatory frameworks relevant to you.

Third, we require a green claims policy. That’s a publicly available document that acts as a guardrail internally, so anyone in marketing or comms knows the policies and processes to follow before publishing sustainability comms.

Because it’s public, it also gives external stakeholders clarity on how you manage your communications, helping build trust.

Once those three things are done and the organisation is recognised as a signatory, we carry out campaign reviews to check they’re implementing their policy appropriately for particular campaigns.

Becky:

My first question, has anybody ever done the training and gone, oh holy moly, this is us? Like, we need to go now, because all our marketing is going to fail the test.

Charlie:

We haven’t had that. We haven’t had someone say, oh my goodness, we have to pull everything down immediately.

What we’ve most realised through training is there’s a real lack of confidence, brought on by the conditions of the last few years. A lot of people are terrified to get things wrong and overthinking it.

There are core, fundamental things that allow you to stand behind what you’re producing. Most trainees get to the end and say, okay, I understand the issue, I understand how it can creep in, and I understand what we can do to mitigate it.

Becky:

Do you have an example to bring it to life? The sort of thing people might recognise in their own organisation?

Charlie:

There are three fundamental areas.

First, claims. Identify any claims you’re making and make sure you have proper substantiation. In an ideal world, substantiation looks like: here’s our evidence for this claim, and here are details of the third party verifying our evidence is robust and delivered with integrity.

Second, language. This is where regulatory frameworks matter. In the UK you’d look at the CMA’s Green Claims Code. That’s your guiding light for use of language and making sure it’s aligned.

Third, context. Organisations can be good at substantiating claims and using appropriate language, but most people identify context as where they could be doing better.

Being clear that yes, the claims are true and the language is appropriate, but have we given full disclosure around how this fits into our overall operation? That’s a key area.

Becky:

This is a tool any organisation could use. Does it appeal more to inherently purpose-driven organisations that want to shine a light on good work, or is it more of a learning tool for organisations that maybe aren’t in that camp?

Is it for everybody, or is there someone it’s better suited to?

Charlie:

We have both.

We have organisations who say: we’ve already invested in being a responsible communicator. We’ve trained staff, we’ve produced ethical marketing policies, and we see the charter as an opportunity to be recognised for that work. There’s a carrot associated with presenting ourselves as such.

We’re seeing more B Corps apply for that reason. They say: we know we’re a responsible corporate citizen, B Corp status shows that, but among competitors who are also B Corps, this is a step some might struggle to make, and we can. It further accentuates how responsible we are, especially in marketing and comms.

Then we have organisations who say: we’re concerned about how we communicate, and we want to go through the framework to learn and improve. Then when we’re recognised as a signatory, we can say we’ve invested in appropriate standards.

So yes, we get both.

Becky:

You’ve got your green claims policy, everyone’s trained, everyone’s behind it. But you’ve gone a step further with TruMark, which is slightly different. Explain what that is and how it fits alongside the charter.

Charlie:

In the first couple of years running the charter, the main feedback from signatories was that our campaign review process was retrospective and reactive. We were checking content after it was published.

They said: that’s great, but it would be brilliant if you could do something proactive and preventative, to stop us producing content that might be found to be greenwashing in the first place.

That led us to AI. What we’ve built, in prototype, people have described as like Grammarly for sustainability comms.

It allows you to check your content for language, claims, and context analysis before you publish it.

But it goes a step further. As a result of checking content, you can optionally publish what we call a transparency report. That report details the analysis done by TruMark: how claims were analysed and substantiated, how language was checked against relevant regulation, and an independent context analysis for the reader.

That then produces what we call a TruMark, which you can append to the original piece of content.

The difference is: the Anti-Greenwash Charter is accreditation at the organisational level. TruMark works at the content or campaign level, checking and validating a specific piece of content.

Becky:

You’ve built this AI tool, which means you’ve had to decide what you want to spot. Are there any phrases, metrics, visuals, or things that make you pause? Red flags where you think, we need to check this because it’s unlikely to be true?

Charlie:

There are classic indicators. Vague statements are a major one. You go onto a sustainability page and there’s no granularity, no detail.

You’ll see things like: we’re a purpose-driven organisation. We prioritise the highest standards of environmental performance. Our team are diverse and wonderful, and everybody dedicates as much time as they possibly can to supporting orphans.

Becky:

It’s almost like you had that verbatim on the tip of your tongue.

What we’re really talking about is aligning what you say with what you actually do.

Most organisations are imperfect. There’s a whole load of stuff that isn’t quite right yet, and probably never will be.

And many of the biggest opportunities, whether decarbonisation or renovation, sit in industries that are part of the problem: fossil energy, aviation, manufacturing, finance. As a responsible communicator, how do you navigate that?

Charlie:

Have you seen Patagonia’s latest impact report? Have you seen the title?

Becky:

I’m going to say no.

Charlie:

It’s genius. The title is: “Nothing we do is sustainable.”

If you asked people to list the most sustainable, purpose-driven organisations, most would put Patagonia high. And their report is titled that.

That encapsulates how you address what you said earlier.

I was delighted to see it, because one of our requirements for all signatories’ green claims policies is a very first section: “Where we can improve.”

Before you get into what you’re doing well, you start with the truth.

No organisation is sustainable. That doesn’t exist. You have greater or lesser degrees of sustainability in different areas of your business. The first thing you need to do to liberate yourself, to speak confidently about what you’re doing well, is be completely transparent and upfront about what you’re not doing so well. The less sustainable parts.

And ideally identify realistic plans for what you’ll do to address those issues.

By doing that, you liberate yourself. Compared to greenhushing, this is the pathway. You address greenwashing by being open about the issues you have.

It’s like the organisational equivalent of comparing yourself on Instagram to perfection. You’re not comparing yourself to real people, you’re comparing yourself to a perfect, possibly AI-created version.

If you hold yourself up against the perfect organisation, you’ll always fall short. It sets you up for failure, and emotionally it’s stressful. It’s awful.

Then you think: is it worth the emotional turmoil? And you go quieter. That’s the danger of the trend towards greenhushing.

Becky:

And talking of danger, we’re in danger of going way over time. So I’m going to skip ahead to the practical.

If you were sitting in a boardroom today, are there five specific questions leaders should ask before approving any piece of comms, sustainability claim, or report line? What are the questions, and how can they tell whether it’s truly fair or transparent?

Charlie:

There are core fundamentals around claims, language, and context. Those are the three checkpoints.

If there’s any claim that can’t be fully substantiated, ideally verified by a third party, it needs addressing.

If you check your language against relevant regulation and find a phrase needs to be more specific, or a term is effectively prohibited by those frameworks, it needs addressing.

Context is the hardest. You have to view the content like an investigative journalist, and ask whether you’ve been fair about the context in which it lands.

If you check those three, you won’t go too far wrong in producing content that passes a greenwash risk assessment.

Becky:

Brilliant.

To finish up, if someone’s listening and they want to find out more about the Anti-Greenwash Charter and the work you do, where should they go? What do they need to do?

Charlie:

Our website is antigreenwashcharter.org.

But what I’d suggest, and we’re encouraging this everywhere, is that regardless of whether an organisation becomes a signatory, producing a green claims policy is best practice if you communicate about sustainability credentials.

So we’ve made our green claims policy template available as a free resource on the website. I think it’s something like antigreenwashcharter.org/green-claims-template, and you can also find it from the podcast page.

People have told us it’s been a useful mirror to hold up to their marketing and comms function. Have we thought about a proper editorial process before we publish? How do we use AI in ideation or content creation? What’s our escalation approach? If someone raises a concern about a claim or language, how do they get in touch, and what do we do?

That’s the starting place. Download the template, look through it, and use it as a sense check on how you’re operating.

Becky:

Well, I think it’s just about sauna time.

Charlie:

I could do it. I’m freezing. I’m absolutely freezing.

But Becky, you’re a brilliant interviewer. Being the nervous interviewee today, I think I’m heading off for a cold shower instead of a sauna, if I’m honest.

Thank you very much for having me on. It was a great conversation.

Becky:

Good luck to you, and thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure, and I’ve no doubt we’ll speak again soon.

Becky:

So that brings us to the end of today’s episode. A huge thank you to Charlie Martin for joining me, and for such an honest, nuanced conversation about trust, transparency, and the messy reality of sustainability communications. This is most definitely not easy.

If there’s one thing I’m going to take away, it’s that none of us benefit from silence. Organisations don’t need to pretend to be perfect. They just need to be super clear about where they stand, where they’re heading, and what they’re learning along the way.

That’s the behaviour shift that unlocks progress, allows us to learn from one another, and move forward together.

It’s something we see at BH&P every day. When organisations get honest about the story they’re truly in, their brand identity, their positioning, the behaviours they reward, the gaps they’re bridging, that’s when marketing and communications become catalysts for real change, not just gloss on the top.

If you’d like to explore the Anti-Greenwash Charter or TruMark, you’ll find the links in the show notes. And if this episode has sparked something, made you think, or made you rethink, please follow the show, leave a quick review, or share it with someone wrestling with similar challenges. It makes a real difference in helping others find these conversations.

Thank you so much for listening. As always, I’m Becky Holland, and I’ll see you next time.