Marketing vs sustainability: Allies or enemies in the battle against greenwashing?

I recently heard a sustainability leader joke that he’d crushed the dreams of many marketers in the past. The impression was that marketers are over-enthusiastic about sharing ‘good news’ sustainability stories, without understanding the substance of their claims.  

It feels harsh to expect people to be experts on something that isn’t their discipline, that no one has previously expected them to understand, and that no one has ever taught them. It’s also not particularly accurate to suggest that marketers aren’t responding to these issues. The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) recently updated its Environmental Claims Code, effective from 1 March 2025. Meanwhile, Ad Net Zero has just launched in Australia, setting out principles for climate action in the advertising industry.  

While the advice provided by that leader to marketers was probably sound, I was exasperated. Why are we, sustainability people, discouraging marketers and communicators? Surely, we should be the most robust of allies? 

At Salterbaxter, part of our work with the UN Global Compact Network Australia has seen us co-design a course to support all professionals to avoid greenwashing. One of the unexpected positive outcomes, beyond a better understanding of greenwashing, is how regularly participants learn (or are reminded) of the power of collaboration with marcomms.  

Several even observed their adversarial approach in the past. “I realised how skeptical of advertising I have been,” noted one participant. There is recognition that this approach needs to change to address greenwashing risks.  

Here are some ways that better collaboration between marketing and sustainability teams can minimise greenwashing risks in your organisation.   

Peer-to-peer learning 

Sustainability is complex, but increasingly it’s an area that all business functions need to know about.  

Sustainability professionals often have an incredible inventory of knowledge, but struggle to find ways to share it across the organisation. Understanding sustainability-related topics, how a business is affected by them, and how consumers comprehend these issues are all important considerations when avoiding greenwashing.  

Actions and communications must be accurate and resonate with the audience, which means understanding what they mean in a wider context. Marcomms and sustainability teams working together is the most effective way to achieve this. Together they can address the knowledge gaps that lead to greenwashing.  

Trust and transparency 

An adversarial relationship does not build trust, and trust is required for transparency within a business.  

Transparency amongst business functions means people can see the full picture. A common greenwashing risk is where businesses create a misleading overall impression. For example, when one positive action is championed by a business, perhaps a flagship program from the sustainability team, but this action is an outlier.  

Overall, the company is doing very little on sustainability, and there are actions from other parts of the business that are in direct contradiction to the benefits of the flagship program. If the company promotes only the benefits of the sustainability program, giving the impression that this a representative approach, there may be the risk of greenwashing.   

Challenging one another, respectfully 

Better collaboration leads to a culture where ideas can be challenged, and solutions can be worked on together. Challenging ideas, respectfully, leads to better ideas. True collaboration means working through problems together and exploring possible alternatives. It is not collaboration to simply cease an activity if someone raises an issue.  

We are seeing this happen with the rise of greenhushing. The slightest challenge means all communication stops; this is not a good approach. There are benefits in communicating about sustainable actions. What’s more, there is increasing regulation that requires companies to make sustainability-related disclosures. Issues will be better identified and mitigated if marketing and sustainability work together to share knowledge and ideas.  

Sustainability is hard enough, let’s not make it harder with unnecessary tension. Let’s figure it out together.  

Tess Ariotti is lead consultant at Salterbaxter Australia.

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topics AANA Ad Net Zero Marketing Salterbaxter Salterbaxter Australia sustainability Tess Ariotti

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