For more than twenty-five years (but who is counting?), one question has shaped my work as a researcher, consultant, and teacher: How does communicating sustainability work?

In the 1990s, sustainability was the shiny new word sliding into boardrooms and across the six o’clock news, mostly on good old-fashioned television and radio. In alarmingly simple terms, it meant doing things differently, shaking up old habits with more attention to environmental and social concerns. The concept drew on milestones such as the 1987 Brundtland Report, which introduced sustainable development into a global vocabulary, and on a growing series of international agreements that eventually led to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015

In the early 1990s, the market slowly transformed into a turbulent landscape of sustainability-flavored claims, with everything suddenly “eco,” “ethical,” “natural,” “green,” and even “sustainable.” Companies rushed into “look at me” mode, covering their brands in leaves, planet icons, cute animals, and uplifting slogans. Visually, I admit the artist inside me was secretly entertained, but substantively, this plethora of claims created confusion, mistrust, and a lot of unwanted noise and shade in the market. In our recent contribution to Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles: A Language for Our Common Future, my co-author and I discussed greenwashing as an ongoing phenomenon, fueled by questionable communication habits that are hard to shake.

As someone who has been in this field a long (long, long) time, I must admit the narrative today is starting to shift. Communicating sustainability now sits firmly on the agenda of many organizations, and advice is everywhere: online toolkits on how to communicate more clearly and make reliable claims, social media feeds dissecting good and bad practice, regulatory workshops, and global and local frameworks and guidelines explaining how to avoid misleading claims, connect with audiences, and use stories and visuals well. As an eternal optimist, I will say that this progress does matter, and it shows how far we have come since the days when a single image of a green tree “did the job.” Some of this guidance is genuinely helpful, some of it is very enthusiastic, and quite a bit still feels like déjà vu with much better visuals.

So, if I had to pin down what I am learning from my personal journey about communicating sustainability, three lessons seem to stay with me.

First, communicating sustainability is neither neat nor simple. In an ideal world, communicators craft a message, send it out, audiences receive it, behavior changes, and the task is accomplished. Real life has other plans. Messages bounce around crowded information spaces, compete with misinformation, everyday worries, and the endless scroll of everything else demanding attention. Accepting this messy, evolving reality is a very good baseline. It reminds us that the language and contact points must fit real life[styles]. People in households, schools, communities, institutions, and businesses do not wake up thinking about policy frameworks; they think about bills, buses, deadlines, relatives, streets, classes, and inboxes. I recall one participant who told me that when they spoke to farmers about climate targets, they were met with silence. But when they spoke about soil quality, productivity, and support required, conversation immediately opened up. The task is to let sustainability sit within and alongside those realities, using words, stories, and examples that feel relevant and helpful, so we are not giving people one more thing to carry into their daily lives but offering an alternative perspective. Treating sustainability communication as a cycle means keeping on showing up and backing it with support systems and consistent action – then credibility, and dare I say, trust, have a real chance to grow.

Second, sustainability communication lives within an ongoing dialogue, not in isolated abstract messages. In my recent contribution to the book Marketing Ethics and Consumer Society, where I write about CSR and the sustainability dialogue, I underline the importance of genuine dialogical relationships in making messages meaningful. Being aware of the wider conversations makes communication relevant because it stands within a broader story [system]. This is why, as a researcher and as an individual, I have immersed myself into networks that turn this dialogue into practice. As an executive board member of a global network on Sustainable Fashion Consumption, I see every day how messages grow stronger when they move through communities of people who question, refine, and push ideas and messages forward.

So, when I was invited to join the CEF’s wider effort to guide and support how we communicate sustainability, I was genuinely thrilled. Being the lead expert in an online course "Role of Communicaton In Green Reform Processes", taking part in the conference "Charting a Greener Horizon: Navigating Towards Sustainable Public Finances" as a panelist on communicating climate change, and reviewing Green Skills Assessment discussion paper, felt like a natural extension of this long-running conversation. It was another chance to be part of the dialogue rather than highlighting challenges.

Finally, sustainability communication needs real support systems so messages land instead of floating in the void. Messages only resonate when public institutions, rules, and routines create space for them to be realized. This means clear standards, regulatory frameworks, green public procurement, training for employees, leadership that supports change, and making sustainable options visible and practical.

Looking back (and forward), I am less interested in perfect answers and more in what is “lived” in practice. Communicating sustainability will never be tidy. If we keep grounding messages in real lives, keep them in dialogue across our networks, and keep building the systems that back them up, then each panel, workshop, memo, lesson, policy brief, and campaign becomes one small step forward. That, to me, is the journey worth staying passionate about.

References

Alevizou, P. 2025. CSR, the sustainability dialogue, and signals of communication. In Marketing Ethics and Consumer Society. Routledge, 103–117.

Alevizou, P. and Henninger, C. E. 2025. 80 Greenwashing. In Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles: A Language for Our Common Future. Routledge, 353–355.

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