For ecommerce merchants wondering whether sustainable branding is worth the investment, the data points to “yes.” Building sustainability into your brand isn’t just a good ethical move; it’s good for your brand image and profit margins as well.
Sustainable business practices have become a genuine factor in purchasing decisions. According to DHL’s 2025 E-Commerce Trends Report, which surveyed 24,000 consumers across 24 countries, 47% of shoppers say they’re willing to change their habits to shop more responsibly. That’s nearly half of your potential customer base actively thinking about where their money goes and how it can make a positive impact on environmental and social issues.
Customers want to buy from companies that share their values, and they’re putting their wallets where their beliefs are. Read on to gain valuable insights about how to make your sustainability strategies more visible across your branding and marketing materials so you can attract those like-minded customers.
What is sustainable branding?
Sustainable branding means building an identity around genuine environmental and social responsibility. It’s not just slapping a green leaf on your logo and calling it a day. A truly sustainable brand considers its impact at every stage, from sourcing materials responsibly to using eco-friendly manufacturing processes.
Environmentally conscious consumers have gotten pretty good at spotting greenwashing, which is when companies make misleading (or exaggerated) claims about their environmental practices to appear more eco-friendly than they actually are. The merchants who’ve earned real credibility in this space did it by making actual operational changes and enacting real sustainability initiatives.
That said, you don’t need a B Corporation certification or any official stamp to start making meaningful changes in how your business operates. Small businesses can come up with innovative solutions to achieve greater environmental sustainability, too. Even starting with one meaningful commitment to sustainability, like reducing your carbon emissions, signals to customers that you’re serious, and you can build from there.
7 examples of sustainable branding
- Ethical practices and recycled materials
- Sustainable sourcing and supply chain transparency
- Sustainable packaging
- Ethical production
- Sustainability impact reports
- Branded recycling program
- Regenerative practices
The brands that stand out don’t just practice sustainability values; they weave that story into every piece of content their customers see. Use these real-world examples to tell your sustainable brand story across every available marketing channel:
1. Ethical practices or recycled materials
If you’ve made the effort to use sustainable materials, communicate your efforts across every customer touchpoint. That includes your website’s About page, product descriptions, packaging inserts, social content, email newsletters, and paid advertising. Customers who care about what their stuff is made from will seek you out and tell their friends.
Pela built its entire product line around Flaxstic, a proprietary material made from flax straw waste, a byproduct that would otherwise be burned or left to decompose, and plant-based biopolymers. The result is a phone case that breaks down fully in a home compost within three to six months, compared to the hundreds of years a conventional plastic case would sit in a landfill.
Pela highlights these plant-based materials, along with its ethical manufacturing processes, on every single product page, making the brand’s commitment to sustainable practices obvious to every shopper who browses the website.
Pela is also certified Climate Neutral and as a B Corporation, and more than 80% of its cases are manufactured at its own factory in Kelowna, British Columbia. It’s helped customers prevent the equivalent of over 100 million plastic bags from entering waste streams, another fact it weaves into the brand storytelling on its website. Pela has placed an impact counter front and center on its homepage, so every visitor immediately sees the brand’s cumulative environmental contribution.
2. Sustainable sourcing and supply chain transparency
What happens at the very beginning of your supply chain matters just as much as what happens at the end. It’s also a lot easier to build these sustainable practices from the beginning than to try to fix them later. For industries with complicated sourcing, like jewelry, where raw materials can come from mines with questionable labor practices and environmental standards, getting the supply chain right from the start requires innovative solutions.
Their Jewelry, founded by Lauren and Alexander Ludwig, became the first company to partner with the Artisanal Gold Council, a nonprofit working to reduce mercury use and improve livelihoods in artisanal gold mining communities. Their Jewelry uses recycled gold vermeil and sterling silver, holds Climate Neutral and 1% for the Planet certifications, and partners with One Tree Planted. These partnerships and certifications, which Their Jewelry makes known on its About page, communicate the brand’s genuine commitment to environmental standards.
Their Jewelry’s About page also shares some of its ambitious sustainability goals (“zero waste 2026”) and environmental philosophies (“leave it better than we found it”). The founders regularly discuss ethical sourcing practices in the press, furthering the brand’s sustainable branding efforts.
“Just because we’re operating in recycled gold doesn’t mean that mining just suddenly doesn’t exist anymore,” says Alexander on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “We have to be very aware of the fact that this isn’t going away anytime soon, and there are people across the globe whose lives are being terribly impacted by mercury and small-scale mining. We want to do everything we can to help them.”
3. Sustainable packaging
Packaging can be as much of an eco-friendly product as whatever you ship inside of it. The choices you make about boxes, tape, filler, and printing might seem small individually, but they multiply across thousands of shipments. Customers notice these details, too. When they open a package filled with plastic air pillows or excessive bubble wrap, it calls your carbon footprint into question and undercuts any sustainability messaging you display on your website. Plus, 82% of shoppers are willing to pay more for products with sustainable packaging.
Rothy’s has made packaging a central part of its sustainability story. Its shoe boxes are made from 85% post-consumer recycled cardboard and are sturdy enough to double as the shipping container, eliminating the need for a box-within-a-box approach. Rothy’s boxes are resealable for returns without packing tape, and the reusable handles on its shipping bags have eliminated roughly 100 pounds of plastic. Everything inside—the cards, the paper, the box itself—is 100% recyclable and plastic-free.
Rothy’s makes all of this information easy for shoppers to find on a Sustainability page on its site, where it shares figures like 3.3 million-plus pounds of cardboard saved and more than 225 million recycled bottles transformed into products. Those are the kinds of numbers that make a concern for the environment feel less abstract. The more concrete and specific you can be when you communicate your sustainability efforts, the better.
4. Ethical production
Sustainable branding isn’t just about the environment. It’s also about people. Factory workers in the fashion and footwear industries often face exploitative conditions, and thanks to news reports and social media discourse, customers are increasingly aware of who made their products and under what circumstances. Committing to fair wages and ethical working conditions can differentiate your brand in a meaningful way that resonates with values-driven shoppers who want to feel good about their purchases.
Poppy Barley, a Canadian footwear and accessories brand, built its entire business model around ethical production. The brand makes these ethical commitments a core part of how it presents itself to customers. Its website features a Our Factories section with photos and detailed profiles of each factory partner—including the owners’ names, number of employees, and the stories of how these family-owned operations got started. Factory workers earn a living wage, work up to a maximum of 48 hours per week, and receive full benefits, including healthcare and a pension.
Poppy Barley carries this storytelling into its Instagram and Substack content, too. One post reveals a pair of skilled makers by name—José and Maria Antonia in León, Mexico—framing every purchase as a direct investment in these artisans’ craft and livelihood, not just a nice pair of shoes.
5. Sustainability impact reports
Want people to actually believe in your sustainable branding? Show your work. Let them see the wins and the areas where you’re still figuring things out. Vague claims about “caring for the planet” don’t land the way they used to. When you can point to a specific number of pounds diverted from landfills or a percentage drop in carbon emissions, that’s something customers can verify. It’s proof, not public relations (PR).
The toothpaste tablet brand Bite gets this. It published to its website a detailed impact report that spells out exactly how much plastic it has kept out of landfills: 75,000 pounds in 2022 alone. Bite promotes its positive environmental impact across Instagram and throughout its blog, The Good Bits, with posts like “We’re Carbon Neutral (And Why It Matters)” and “The Three Pillars of Sustainability, Explained.”
As a certified B Corporation and Public Benefit Corporation, Bite binds itself to high standards and communicates them right down to the packaging. When a customer opens the box, the inside reads “Over 8 billion plastic personal care products are created every year, ending up in our oceans and landfills. But that stops with you,” stamped next to “Clean Ingredients, Plastic-Free, Cruelty-Free.”
6. Branded recycling program
Most products eventually end up in a landfill, even ones made with good intentions. Truly sustainable brands think about what happens at the end of a product’s useful life and build systems to ensure those materials get a second chance. Taking responsibility for your products from creation through disposal creates a closed loop that reduces your environmental impact and shows customers you’re thinking long-term.
Manduka, a premium yoga equipment brand, partnered with Supercircle, a textile recycling and take-back platform for fashion brands, to launch what it says is the yoga industry’s first end-of-life recycling program. Manduka features the recycling program prominently on its website and drives sign-ups through email. One email co-branded with Supercircle leads with “introducing recycling with Manduka” and explains that yoga mats take 80 to 1,000 years to break down in a landfill.
All you have to do is navigate to Manduka’s Supercircle portal, print a prepaid shipping label, pay a refundable deposit, and send in your old mat. Any brand, any condition. Supercircle breaks it down into component parts, and nothing ends up in a landfill or gets shipped overseas. In return, Manduka gives you 20% off your next purchase.
The company has used its Instagram to report diverting more than 34,000 pounds of mat material from landfills so far. All of these brand touchpoints—the landing page, the email, the checkout flow, and social posts—reinforce that Manduka is committed to owning the full life cycle of its product, from purchase to disposal.
7. Regenerative practices
More brands are realizing that just neutralizing their environmental impact isn’t enough anymore. A handful are going further, putting money into regenerative practices that actually leave the environment better than they found it.
Patagonia Provisions aims to prove a point that what people eat can help fix the climate instead of wrecking it. To forward this idea, the brand helped create Regenerative Organic Certified, which requires farms to hit strict marks for soil health, treatment of animals, and worker conditions. The brand, which operates as a certified B Corporation and is a member of 1% for the Planet, also heavily uses Kernza, a perennial grain with roots that stay in the ground all year, helping to stop erosion and enrich soil over time.
To amplify these actions, the brand markets its products as “responsibly sourced foods for the long haul” and has dedicated webpages to sharing its “Impact” data, its focus on regenerative organic agriculture, and its mission to make eating a form of activism. Patagonia Provisions also makes its sustainable branding known through its newsletter content and activity on social media.
For a small brand just getting started, Patagonia Provisions’ level of commitment to a sustainable future might feel out of reach. But you don’t have to launch a grain revolution. If you have a skin care beauty brand, source just one botanical from a regenerative farm. If you have a coffee company, switch one blend to a climate-friendly supplier. Then share this information where customers will find it—on the packaging, in a post-purchase email, or in the product description itself. Sustainability-minded customers are already hunting for these details, so put them where they’ll look.
Sustainable branding FAQ
Why does sustainable branding matter?
Sustainable branding matters because customers increasingly choose to spend their money with companies that share their values, and nearly half of all shoppers now consider sustainability when making purchases. Beyond potentially increasing consumer demand, operating sustainably can lead to stronger brand loyalty and a more resilient business model that can weather changing regulations and shifting consumer expectations.
What is an example of sustainable branding?
Pela makes phone cases from Flaxstic, a material made from flax straw waste and plant-based biopolymers that break down in a home compost within a few months. It’s helped customers divert the equivalent of more than 100 million plastic bags from waste streams, and it manufactures over 80% of its products at its own facility in British Columbia, Canada.
What are the four pillars of sustainability?
The four pillars of sustainability are environmental, social, economic, and governance (sometimes called human or cultural). A sustainable brand should consider all four because focusing only on environmental impact while ignoring worker welfare, for example, creates an incomplete picture that savvy customers will eventually see through.
