The numbers are in: nine in 10 consumers believe businesses should play a role in curbing climate change, according to a 2025 Getty Images report. At the same time, consumers are wary of surface-level sustainable marketing activities. The same report found 76% of consumers are skeptical about “green” products and services, so it’s important to not use sustainability as a marketing ploy.
Read on for real-world examples of businesses that spread the word about their eco-friendly efforts in an authentic way, so you can build a passionate, loyal customer base that supports your sustainability goals.
What is sustainable marketing?
Sustainable marketing is when a business promotes its sustainable practices as part of its marketing efforts, appealing to customers concerned about social and environmental responsibility.
Sustainable marketing often goes hand in hand with corporate social responsibility, a business model that prioritizes social and environmental issues and how companies can drive meaningful change.
A sustainable marketing strategy involves promoting these sustainable business practices—on your company’s social media, website, and product packaging—to demonstrate that your customers’ purchases will have a positive impact on society and the environment.
Sustainable marketing pillars
Sustainable marketing practices demonstrate how a brand is committed to more than using the right materials. It should show how it’s helping to build a more equitable and sustainable future through its economic and sociocultural systems. Here are the three sustainable marketing pillars:
- Social. A company’s social responsibility includes how it treats workers and promotes ethical labor practices. This social pillar focuses on people, so it can also encompass brands donating to human rights organizations.
- Environmental. The environmental pillar is about reducing carbon emissions across an organization and finding more sustainable ways to package and deliver products.
- Economic. This pillar balances profitability with ethical business practices, meaning that as a business grows, it doesn’t deplete resources or put profit over people.
Sustainable marketing vs. greenwashing vs. green marketing
Sustainable marketing, greenwashing, and green marketing all aim to position a company as eco-friendly, but they differ in practice. Here’s how:
Sustainable marketing
Sustainable marketing lets businesses highlight how their initiatives reduce waste, conserve energy, and protect the planet. This strategy informs consumers about a business’s efforts, so customers can make educated decisions that align with their values.
Truly sustainable brands provide documentation to back up their claims and offer specific details about how they’re working to improve the environment or society. This can be expensive, often requiring third-party certification (like a certified B Corporation, which evaluates social and environmental performance) or in-house research. However, these investments often pay off with long-lasting customer loyalty.
Greenwashing
Greenwashing is when businesses portray themselves as more sustainable than they actually are. They may make vague and misleading claims or even false statements to entice customers to support what they think is an environmentally friendly product or brand. General claims (like “all-natural materials” or “ethically sourced”) without concrete proof or documentation are common examples of greenwashing.
In some cases, businesses use their visuals to mislead. They may use environment-forward designs—think green palettes and nature imagery—or even design products to appear sustainable when they’re not.
Greenwashing can work in the short term, but will erode brand trust over time. Some countries even have regulations designed to prevent greenwashing.
Green marketing
Green marketing focuses on boosting messages about environmental stewardship across manufacturing, packaging, and shipping. Unlike sustainable marketing, it doesn’t include societal efforts like maintaining ethical practices with business partners (like sourcing from Fair Trade producers) and social responsibility around issues such as working conditions for employees (like guaranteeing factory workers fair wages and a safe workplace).
Regulations on sustainable marketing
With sustainability quickly becoming a core value for modern consumers, many governments have begun to develop or strengthen their regulations that oversee sustainability marketing. Understanding these regulations can help brands remain compliant in the different regions in which they operate and keep up with other brands:
- United States. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” and released a set of Green Guides to direct businesses in substantiating and qualifying environmental marketing claims.
- European Union. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) governs several sustainability initiatives for business in the European Union, including information on product sustainability. An EU law prohibits companies from using terms like “eco-friendly” or “recycled,” unless they can provide proof to support the claims.
- Canada. The Competition Act prohibits businesses from making deceptive statements or using misleading images or symbols on packaging, on a product, or online. In 2024, it was updated to include provisions requiring companies to back up any environmental claims.
Sustainable marketing benefits
With sustainable marketing, you can demonstrate your brand values and appeal to customers. Here are a few other benefits:
Customer connections
Climate change is a top concern for many consumers: 69% of consumers feel the effects of climate change in their everyday lives, according to Getty Images.
By focusing on sustainability and being as transparent as possible, you can tap into a topic that matters to a large swath of consumers. If purchasing from your brand helps customers be a part of the solution, it can also influence consumer behavior by encouraging them to make repeat purchases.
“When it comes to [brand] loyalty, values can be a really interesting way of keeping people engaged,” says Rembrant van der Mijnsbrugge, cofounder of Shopify Partner agency Mote. “If people can build an emotional connection with your brand, that is far more powerful and long-lasting than if people are simply purchasing a product to meet a quick need.”
Premium pricing
Sustainable products can be more expensive, but that won’t necessarily deter customers. According to a 2024 PricewaterhouseCoopers study, consumers are, on average, willing to pay 9.7% more for products that are sustainably produced and sourced, even with cost-of-living concerns.
Furniture brand Sabai Design doesn’t shy away from premium pricing as it experiments with different sustainable materials. Its Elevate and Evergreen lines use materials like rubberized coconut, which can add thousands of dollars to the price. “That is a pretty expensive material that we’ve incorporated to substitute synthetic material where we can,” says Sabai Design founder Phantila Phataprasit on an episode of Shopify Masters. “It’s very durable. It’s all natural. It’s non-toxic.”
If you believe this may alienate some of your customer base, you can do what Sabai Design did and create lines that offer products at a more accessible entry point. “We’re providing products that span a range in terms of price points so people can shop where they’re able to shop,” Phatila says.
Innovation
Finding sustainable solutions means your brand might need to get more creative. For example, the cofounders behind refillable carbonation brand Aerflo saw that the sparkling water market was growing, but consumers didn’t have sustainable or feasible choices. “The options that they had were either single-use or countertop systems,” cofounder John Thorp says on an episode of Shopify Masters.
That pushed the duo to find a better way. They interviewed hundreds of sparkling water lovers to understand their sustainability concerns. “A couple of things came out of that that led us into the overall design,” John says. “There was this kind of intersection of cost and sustainability—feeling like they love this beverage but they felt guilty when they had it.”
Because they wanted to create a product they could market as sustainable, they ended up inventing something completely new: a portable soda maker. It wasn’t a linear path for Aerflo, but what helped the brand come up with this innovative, eco-friendly product was to collaborate with the right partners and put their customers’ needs at the forefront.
Examples of sustainable marketing
Sustainable marketing is a combination of meeting consumer demand and achieving an environmental or social initiative. It’s a tall order if you want to start an eco-conscious company, but many sustainable businesses have paved the way.
Look at some examples of companies that have created sustainable products and missions that resonate with audiences around the globe:
Oceanfoam
Oceanfoam is a sustainable business that creates active-lifestyle products out of recycled materials and ocean algae. As part of its sustainable marketing strategy, it promotes its initiative to help with environmental ocean restoration.
The environment is at the core of the brand’s identity. “I wanted Oceanfoam to be tied to the ocean and our planet and make the world better,” Zachary Quinn, CEO and founder of Oceanfoam, says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “We work with a company based in Mississippi that takes freshwater and saltwater ocean algae and turns it into products. It’s taken out of water treatment facilities in the country as well as harvesting events on lakes and rivers—all that flow down into the ocean eventually.”
Oceanfoam’s website includes an in-depth breakdown of the production process and diagrams to show where its materials end up in the core product—presenting the math behind the brand’s efforts at waste reduction.
On TikTok, it gives a complete tour of one of the algae harvesting facilities that supplies its raw materials. It lets the video do the talking, giving a peek into its “sustainable three-step algae harvesting process.”
Dieux Skin
While skin care brand Dieux doesn’t consider itself a sustainable company because it can’t fully eliminate plastic, it does partake in sustainable marketing. The company regularly posts about its use of aluminum packaging and provides context about why it chose this material.
For example, one Instagram post explains that the brand uses samples made from 100% recycled aluminum to reduce the waste created by plastic sample products.
This sustainable marketing foundation allows Dieux to speak genuinely about news related to climate change and the environment. When a climate research center was shuttered in December 2025, the brand posted a carousel on Instagram to denounce the decision and explain why its followers should care. Dieux also shared a link to the Union of Concerned Scientists so its audience could learn more about what everyday people could do.
With more than 1,700 likes and 160 comments, the post resonated—and many commenters shared that they were proud to support the brand.
Sabai Design
Sabai Design is a furniture and home goods company that makes products with sustainable materials and provides replacement parts so products last longer. The brand also encourages customers to recycle their products with a robust buyback program, allowing it to reuse materials and dispose of waste responsibly.
For Sabai Design founder Phantila Phataprasit, an important aspect of her sustainability-focused marketing strategy is transparency—keeping her target audience informed about the real ways her company is working to make a positive impact on the planet.
“‘Sustainability’ is such a vague term,” Phantila says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “There’s a lot of frustration around the term and its use by people, companies, brands, because a company can impact the environment and our planet in so many different ways. For us at Sabai, sustainability means looking at the entire picture—addressing the amount of waste that the furniture industry creates, addressing the actual materials, and looking at the longevity of our products. If you’re communicating that to your customers, you’re all kind of on the same side.”
One way Sabai Design informs its customers is by promoting its sustainability messages and brand values across its website, such as on each category and product page. At the bottom of its category pages, visitors can see the words “Sustainability is not a buzzword—it’s our blueprint.” It also includes a call to action (CTA) that invites customers to learn more about its initiatives.
The first initiative is its Sabai Revive program, which encourages people to buy its products secondhand or participate in its buy-back program. The second initiative is its replacement program, which encourages customers to buy replacement parts to extend their furniture’s longevity instead of purchasing a new couch.
This transparency can help customers feel confident in their purchasing decisions, confirming Sabai is a sustainable organization that focuses on more than just profit.
Fluff
Imagine a business model that encourages shoppers to stop and think for up to three months before making a purchase. That’s Fluff in a nutshell.
Open four times throughout the year, the business sells refillable Cloud Compacts with lip oils and powder that are vegan, natural, and have never been tested on animals. The product drop system means the brand isn’t creating more waste or using more resources—and it has the added benefit of generating hype for the product.
“A drop model can drive demand by restricting the availability of our products or limiting the time a customer can buy,” says founder Erika Geraerts on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “But we are limited ourselves by our minimum order quantities with our manufacturer. With each drop, we only have a certain number of our cloud compacts and refills to sell.”
The limited-time system promotes thoughtful shopping, helps create more excitement around the shopping windows, and frees up the marketing team to work on positive messaging throughout the year without needing to constantly push sales.
Their Jewelry
Eco-friendly brand Their Jewelry started with using recycled materials. “Initially, the focus was on using existing materials to avoid further mining and waste,” says cofounder Lauren Ludwig on an episode of Shopify Masters. “From there, the sustainability efforts expanded to include our eco-friendly packaging, ensuring it could either be recycled or made from recycled materials or reused.”
Once Their Jewelry saw that greenwashing was becoming a focus of conversation among consumers, it looked for ways to stand apart from other brands that claimed to use recycled materials.
“After about a year, we started hearing this phrase ‘greenwashing’ and that people were just saying, ‘Oh, we’re recycled’ and trying to show that they’re achieving sustainability when that wasn’t really the case,” Lauren adds. “We had a goal to shift and expand our sustainability initiatives.”
The brand received certifications from nonprofit organization 1% for the Planet and became climate-neutral. It started a partnership with One Tree Planted and the Artisanal Gold Council. It communicates these initiatives on its website, giving consumers a look into the impact of its decisions.
Sustainable marketing FAQ
What is the sustainable marketing concept?
The concept of sustainable marketing is to promote products and services alongside environmental and social initiatives. Businesses use sustainable marketing strategies—like donating a portion of profits from each purchase or using recycled materials—to appeal to customers who want their purchases to align with their values.
How can sustainable marketing be achieved?
Businesses can support sustainable business practices by investing in initiatives and efforts that contribute to environmental and social issues that their consumers care about. Even if your product doesn’t have a built-in environmental innovation or sustainable angle, you can still participate in programs, donate, or provide services that help the planet and people in need.
Why is sustainable marketing important?
Sustainability in business is important because it is a way for companies to deliver value to customers while contributing to social and environmental progress. Sustainable marketing allows companies to create added value for their customers, who aren’t just buying a product but supporting a mission. This creates deeper brand loyalty and can drive sales growth.
