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Many UK businesses breathed a sigh of relief when the EU scrapped its Green Claims Directive in June 2025. That relief was premature. Green claims compliance in 2026 is more demanding — with the ECGT enforcing from 27 September 2026 and CMA direct fining powers already live.

Product-level 'carbon neutral' claims based on offsetting are banned in the EU from September 2026, and the ASA has been ruling against them in the UK for two years. If this phrase appears on your packaging or advertising, here's what you need to do.

A third of UK businesses are deliberately communicating less about their sustainability efforts, scared of being accused of greenwashing. The problem: silence has its own set of risks. Here’s what greenhushing actually costs, and what to do instead.

The CMA's January 2026 guidance makes UK businesses liable for environmental claims they repeat from suppliers — not just the ones they originate. Here is what changed, what the stakes are, and what UK SMEs need to do now.

Earth Day comes with a wave of green content. Pledges, commitments, sustainability highlights: brands of every size use the moment to signal where they stand on environmental issues. Then April 23rd arrives, and most of those brands move on. The posts don't. Every sustainability claim published this week is still live, still indexed, and still attributable to your brand. In a regulatory environment that is tightening faster than most communications teams realise, that matters

The CMA published new supply chain green claims guidance in January 2026. Here is what it means for UK SMEs, what has changed on liability, and the six practical steps you need to take now.

Sustainability is inherently complex. That’s not new, and it’s not going to change. You’re dealing with multiple topics, evolving standards, technical detail, and a constant stream of new expectations. It’s a lot to hold together. The problem is that this complexity often carries straight through into how companies communicate. You see it in long explanations, dense language, and messages that try to do too much at once. The intention is usually sound — to be accurate, comple

Most sustainability communications are built with external audiences in mind. Investors, customers, regulators, NGOs. A lot of effort goes into getting those messages right, from tone and positioning to the level of detail included. But there’s a quieter issue that often sits in the background, and it tends to get far less attention than it should. Whether the organisation itself is actually aligned on what’s being said. Even the most carefully written sustainability message

There’s been a noticeable shift in how sustainability messaging is being received. Not all at once, and not everywhere, but gradually, across different audiences, the level of scrutiny is increasing. Statements that might have been accepted a few years ago are now being looked at more closely. Claims are being questioned. Language is being picked apart. And in some cases, challenged publicly. This isn’t just coming from one direction. Regulators are paying more attention. NGO

Sustainability communications rarely suffer from a lack of input. If anything, the opposite is true. By the time a piece of content is ready to go out, it has often passed through multiple teams. Sustainability, legal, compliance, communications, leadership. Each one brings a different lens, a different concern, and a different threshold for risk. Individually, that makes complete sense. Collectively, though, it can create a very specific kind of problem: the message starts

There’s no shortage of sustainability content right now. Reports, updates, commitments, dashboards, announcements. It’s constant, and in many cases, it’s well intentioned. But here’s the issue. More communication doesn’t automatically mean better communication. In sustainability, it often does the opposite. When the message isn’t clear, adding more of it just makes the confusion harder to ignore. The problem isn’t effort. If anything, most teams are doing more than ever. More

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been deep in testing, refining, breaking, and rebuilding what will soon become the first live version of My Green Comms. Final tests are now running. Before I open it up more widely, I wanted to share a few honest reflections from behind the scenes. Because building an AI tool specifically for sustainability communications has reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time: this isn’t really a writing problem. It’s a clarity and credibility p

Credibility in sustainability communications is not about saying more, sounding greener, or publishing faster. In fact, some of the least credible sustainability messaging I see comes from organisations that are trying very hard to say all the right things. After more than 20 years in communications, and almost 15 working specifically in sustainability, I have learned this: trust is built through clarity, not confidence. And clarity often means being more precise, more honest

Impact has become one of the most overused and misunderstood words in sustainability communications . Everyone wants to show they’re making a difference. But here’s the catch: under pressure, many organisations end up saying more than they can prove or promising more than they can deliver. This isn’t usually about dishonesty. It’s often because they struggle to discuss progress, limitations, and intent in a way that still sounds confident. The Real Risk Isn’t Under-Claiming.

1. Introduction: The High Stakes of “Going Green” In today’s market, the pressure on companies to demonstrate environmental responsibility has never been greater. Customers, investors, employees, and regulators are all paying closer attention to how organisations talk about sustainability . That pressure makes it tempting to reach for simple, appealing terms like “eco‑friendly,” “green,” or “sustainable” to describe products, services, or operations. While often well‑intentio

If there’s one word that comes up again and again in sustainability conversations, it’s trust . Brands want it. NGOs need it. Everyone worries about losing it. Audiences are increasingly sceptical of anything that sounds polished, overconfident, or too good to be true. What’s interesting is that most trust issues in sustainability communications don’t stem from outright dishonesty. They arise from a lack of clarity. Not because people are trying to mislead, but because sustai

Sustainability communications jobs have quietly become some of the most complex roles in organisations today. On paper, they often sound straightforward enough: communicate sustainability commitments, manage messaging, support campaigns, tell the story. But anyone actually working in sustainability communications knows the reality is far messier and more complicated. These roles now sit at the intersection of risk, trust, regulation, reputation, and expectation. And that shif

Sustainability communication can be a minefield; not because people don’t care, but because everyone feels the pressure to get it right. And when you’re a small team juggling a hundred other things, it’s easy to feel like you’re one sentence away from saying something wrong, sounding preachy, or attracting the "Actually…" brigade on LinkedIn. So we end up playing it safe. Or trying to sound more impressive than we are. Or staying quiet altogether. Here’s the thing: most susta

(And Why “Making Stuff Up” is a Feature You Don’t Have to Accept) People talk a lot about how AI can write for you, but that’s never been the part I find most interesting. Writing is the final two percent of the job. The harder part, and the part most communicators struggle with, is thinking clearly enough to get there. That’s where AI can genuinely help: not as a writer that replaces you, but as a partner that removes friction. The tool that helps you structure your thoughts

I never set out to build a career in communications. I just liked writing; first stories, then essays, then anything that helped me make sense of ideas. It wasn’t a grand plan; it was simply something I enjoyed. Studying English Literature and Publishing in Oxford sharpened that instinct. I started to pay more attention to clarity, structure, and how the right words make complicated things feel simple. My early twenties took me to Inner Mongolia, where I taught English. That