Sustainability has become one of the most overused words in business. Clothing brands promise conscious collections. Retailers advertise recycled materials. Companies publish net zero commitments and environmental goals. The claims are everywhere, but proving them is much harder.
Greenwashing is often framed as companies making false environmental claims, but that definition is too simple. The harder cases to identify are the ones built around something that is technically true. A company can reduce emissions in one part of its business while increasing them somewhere else. It can improve a single product while leaving the rest of its business model untouched. It can highlight one environmental achievement without giving consumers enough context to understand how much of the overall picture has actually changed.
That raises a more difficult question than simply asking whether a company is greenwashing. Where is the line between genuine progress and carefully crafted marketing?
That question came up during a conversation on The Lexy Show with Drew Shula, founder and CEO of Vertical Group, a sustainability consulting firm specializing in high-performance and net zero buildings. Instead of talking about certifications or energy-efficient construction, Drew shared a story about a business decision his company made years ago. Vertical Group had accepted sponsorships from a natural gas utility for industry events. At the time, the partnership appeared to support conversations around sustainability. Eventually, the company reached a different conclusion. The sponsorship wasn’t helping move the industry forward as much as it was helping the sponsor appear environmentally progressive. Walking away meant turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars in future business, but Drew said the company no longer believed the partnership aligned with its values.
The story has nothing to do with fashion on the surface. But the more I thought about it, the more familiar it became. The fashion industry has spent years trying to convince consumers that sustainability can be found in a collection, a fabric, or a certification. The harder question is whether sustainability has changed the way those companies actually operate.
That’s why conversations about sustainability often feel so frustrating. The discussion tends to revolve around individual products instead of entire business models.
A fast fashion retailer may launch a collection made with recycled polyester, but if the company is still producing thousands of new styles every week, has the environmental impact meaningfully changed? A luxury brand may publish a climate pledge while continuing to rely on resource-intensive production methods. Even companies making legitimate improvements face a difficult challenge: proving that sustainability isn’t simply another marketing strategy.
That’s what makes greenwashing so difficult to spot. The strongest examples aren’t built on lies. They’re built on selective truths.
Sustainability is Becoming Easier to Market Than to Measure
One reason sustainability has become so difficult to evaluate is that there is no single definition consumers can rely on. Words like “eco-friendly,” “green,” “responsibly made,” and even “sustainable” don’t automatically tell shoppers what a company has actually done. Depending on where a company operates, those claims may face very different levels of legal oversight, leaving brands with considerable flexibility in how they describe their products.
That ambiguity creates an environment where marketing often moves faster than accountability.
Fashion isn’t unique in facing this problem. Drew’s work focuses on buildings, an industry responsible for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions through construction and day-to-day operations. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, buildings and construction account for roughly 37% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, making them one of the largest contributors to climate change. Yet many conversations about sustainable buildings focus on individual technologies or certifications instead of examining whether an entire project is designed to reduce emissions over its lifetime.
The same pattern appears throughout fashion.
A brand might emphasize organic cotton in one collection while remaining silent about fossil fuel-based synthetic fibers used elsewhere. Another might advertise lower-impact packaging without discussing overproduction, unsold inventory, or supply chain emissions. None of those improvements are necessarily meaningless, but they become difficult to evaluate when they’re presented in isolation.
Consumers often assume sustainability works like a checklist. Use recycled materials. Reduce plastic packaging. Offset emissions. Earn a certification. In reality, sustainability is much closer to an ongoing process than a finish line. Every decision involves trade-offs. Every material has an environmental footprint. Every supply chain creates impacts somewhere.
That’s why companies willing to discuss those trade-offs often appear more credible than companies promising simple solutions.
The Business Model Matters More Than the Marketing
One idea kept resurfacing throughout my conversation with Drew: sustainability cannot be separated from the way a business actually operates.
That sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of.
Companies understandably want to highlight progress. Investors want measurable environmental goals. Consumers want quick ways to identify responsible brands. Marketing departments want stories that are easy to communicate. The result is an endless stream of headlines announcing environmental achievements without explaining whether those achievements fundamentally change the business itself.
Fashion offers countless examples.
Brands celebrate collections made from recycled fibers while continuing to increase production volumes every year. Retailers advertise clothing donation bins while manufacturing new garments faster than donated clothing can realistically be reused. Environmental messaging becomes attached to isolated projects instead of asking a more difficult question: has the company changed the system that created the problem in the first place?
That doesn’t mean every sustainability initiative should be dismissed. Progress rarely happens all at once. It does mean consumers should become more skeptical of improvements that sound impressive but represent only a small fraction of a company’s overall operations.
The sponsorship story Drew shared illustrates that distinction perfectly. The difficult decision wasn’t about whether natural gas companies should participate in conversations about sustainability. It was whether accepting sponsorship money risked strengthening an environmental narrative that didn’t accurately reflect the company’s broader business. Those are complicated questions, but they’re exactly the kinds of questions sustainability requires if accountability is going to mean anything beyond good intentions.
Why Consumers Keep Carrying the Weight
One of the biggest consequences of greenwashing isn’t simply that it makes companies appear more environmentally responsible than they are. It also shifts responsibility onto consumers, encouraging people to believe climate change can be solved primarily through better shopping habits. For years, sustainability messaging has focused on individual actions. Bring a reusable bag. Buy the “better” product. Recycle more. None of those actions are bad, but they can distract from a much larger reality. Individual purchasing decisions exist within systems shaped by corporations, governments, and industries making decisions on a completely different scale.
That distinction came up during my conversation with Drew when we discussed personal responsibility versus corporate responsibility. His point wasn’t that consumers don’t have a role to play. It was that one person’s environmental footprint simply isn’t comparable to the decisions made by multinational corporations. Fashion highlights that imbalance perfectly. Consumers are expected to shop responsibly while brands control nearly all of the information. Clothing labels advertise recycled materials without explaining how much was actually used. Sustainability reports stretch hundreds of pages while leaving basic questions unanswered about production volumes, emissions, or overproduction. Companies shape the narrative, yet consumers are expected to decide which claims deserve their trust.
Transparency is More Valuable Than Perfection
One idea that surfaced throughout my conversation with Drew is that credibility rarely comes from claiming perfection. It comes from acknowledging complexity. Every product has an environmental impact, every supply chain involves trade-offs, and no company has solved sustainability. The businesses that openly discuss those realities tend to be far more credible than those presenting sustainability as a finished achievement.
Drew pointed to Patagonia as an example, not because the company is perfect, but because it has consistently acknowledged that making clothing still consumes resources while publishing information about where it has made progress and where work still remains. That approach stands in sharp contrast to brands relying on broad environmental language with little supporting evidence. The more absolute the claim, the more questions it should invite.
Accountability Starts Long Before a Consumer Makes a Purchasing Decision
The sponsorship story Drew shared stayed with me because it showed that accountability often requires decisions that aren’t immediately profitable. Walking away from hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorship revenue wasn’t about optics. It was about deciding that credibility mattered more than helping another company strengthen its environmental image.
Clothing companies face similar choices every day. Do they slow production? Publish emissions data that isn’t flattering? Invest in better supply chains instead of bigger marketing campaigns? Those decisions reveal far more about a company’s priorities than another “sustainable” collection ever could.
For consumers, that means asking different questions. Instead of asking whether a product is sustainable, ask how much of the business has actually changed. Is the claim backed by measurable data? Does it apply to the whole company or just one collection? Does the company acknowledge what it hasn’t solved yet?
