This glossary defines the sustainability terms that show up most in marketing briefs, supplier questionnaires and regulator guidance, in plain language, with who defines each one and what changes for your own sustainability marketing once you understand it. Entries are grouped under claims and regulation, measurement and reporting, certification, and digital and web.
Last updated: September 2026
Claims and regulation
Greenwashing
Greenwashing is when a company’s environmental claims are broader or less accurate than what it actually does, from a leaf logo with nothing behind it to a number nobody can trace to a real measurement. The Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission both treat it as a consumer protection issue, not just a reputation problem. For marketing, that means routing every claim past whoever owns the evidence before it ships, and checking how the best sustainability marketing agencies build that check into their own process before you brief one.
Green claims
A green claim is any statement, image or symbol suggesting a product, service or company has a positive environmental impact, whether it is explicit, like “recyclable packaging,” or implicit, like a leaf icon, a green palette or the word natural. Regulators increasingly treat implicit claims the same as explicit ones: if it creates an impression, it has to be true. For marketing, that means building claims into brand strategy from the start, the job of a sustainable branding agency, rather than adding a green coat of paint to a finished campaign.
FTC Green Guides
The Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides are its guidance on making environmental marketing claims without being deceptive under US law, covering terms like recyclable, compostable, biodegradable and carbon offset, and how much evidence each one needs. They were last updated in 2012, and the FTC opened a review in 2022; as of early 2026, no revised version had been published, so the 2012 text is still what claims are measured against. For sustainability marketing, that means treating the older, stricter reading as the safe one until an update lands.
EU Green Claims Directive
The EU Green Claims Directive was a proposed law that would have required companies to get environmental claims verified by an independent third party before using them. In June 2025, the European Commission announced its intention to withdraw the proposal, largely over its burden on small businesses, though formal withdrawal was still pending as this was written. That does not remove EU rules on claims: the separate Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive stays in force and starts applying on September 27, 2026, banning generic claims like “sustainable” and restricting “carbon neutral” claims based on offsets alone. For marketing into the EU, September 2026 is the deadline that matters, not the fate of the directive making headlines.
Substantiation
Substantiation is the FTC requirement that an advertiser have competent and reliable evidence for a claim before making it, not gathered afterward to defend it. For environmental claims, the evidence has to match the claim’s scope, so a claim about one product needs product-level data, not a company-wide average. In sustainability marketing, that flips the usual order of operations: the proof needs to exist before the headline is written, and it is the foundation any eco-friendly marketing strategy has to be built on.
Measurement and reporting
Carbon neutral
Carbon neutral means an organization’s net greenhouse gas emissions equal zero, reached by reducing what it can and offsetting what is left with verified credits. The claim alone says nothing about how much was reduced versus offset, which is why two “carbon neutral” companies can have very different real footprints. Under the EU’s Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, claims based on offsetting alone, without a genuine reduction behind them, will be restricted starting September 27, 2026. For marketing, that means leading with the reduction number, not just the offset certificate.
Net zero
Net zero is a deeper commitment than carbon neutral: emissions cuts consistent with holding warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as defined by the Science Based Targets initiative, with any remaining emissions addressed through permanent removal rather than offsetting. It requires cutting most emissions, not buying credits to cover most of them. For marketing, that makes net zero and carbon neutral two different claims, not synonyms, and using them interchangeably is one of the faster ways to get sustainability marketing flagged for greenwashing.
Scope 1, 2, and 3
Scope 1, 2 and 3 are the emissions categories defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Scope 1 is direct emissions from sources a company owns, Scope 2 is indirect emissions from purchased electricity and heat, and Scope 3 is everything else in the value chain, including suppliers, travel and how customers use a product. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol announced in July 2026 that it will merge these standards with the international standard ISO 14064-1 into one combined standard, with a public draft expected in 2027. For a marketing or agency business, most emissions usually sit in Scope 3, so a footprint claim that stops at Scope 1 and 2 is measuring the smaller part.
Science based targets
Science based targets are emissions goals validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, known as SBTi, as consistent with the Paris Agreement. SBTi published a fully revised Corporate Net-Zero Standard, version 2.0, on June 11, 2026, adding requirements based on company size and sector along with mandatory governance and disclosure. Companies can submit targets under the older version 1.3.1 or the new version 2.0 until January 31, 2028, after which 2.0 becomes mandatory. For sustainability marketing, an “SBTi validated” claim is worth attaching a version and date to, since the standard just changed under it.
Life cycle assessment
A life cycle assessment, or LCA, is a standardized method, defined in ISO 14040 and 14044, for measuring a product’s environmental impact from raw material extraction through manufacturing, use and disposal. It produces a full data set covering carbon, water and waste at each stage, not a single score. For marketing, that changes what a “lower impact” claim can say: name the stage where the improvement happened, rather than imply the whole product got greener.
EPD
An Environmental Product Declaration, or EPD, is an independently verified report disclosing a product’s life cycle assessment results, built on ISO 14025 and a category-specific set of rules so EPDs for similar products can be compared. It started in building materials and is spreading into other categories as procurement teams ask for it. For marketing, an EPD is a document you can hand to a buyer or link to in a proposal, which carries more weight than a sustainability marketing claim written for a webpage.
Carbon offset versus insetting
A carbon offset pays for an emissions reduction or removal project outside a company’s own value chain, such as funding reforestation elsewhere. Insetting means investing in reductions inside the company’s own supply chain, for example paying a supplier it actually buys from to switch to regenerative practices. Insetting is harder to scale but easier to substantiate, since the company can point to a specific supplier and a specific number. For marketing, an insetting story usually holds up to detail; an offset claim holds up better when it stays brief and precise.
Quick gut check: before a term like this shows up in your next supplier questionnaire or board deck, it is worth knowing where your own sustainability marketing and website already stand. Send us your website and get a plan and a quote within 24 hours. Get a quote.
Circular economy
A circular economy is a business model designed to keep materials and products in use through reuse, repair, remanufacturing and recycling, instead of the traditional take-make-dispose model. The framework most often cited for it comes from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. For marketing, translating circularity into a campaign takes more nuance than the phrase itself, which is where marketing for sustainable brands work earns its keep instead of borrowing the term as decoration.
GRI
GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative, is an independent international organization that sets the GRI Standards, a modular framework of Universal, Sector and Topic standards used for sustainability reporting. It is one of the most referenced reporting frameworks worldwide, alongside newer regulatory ones like CSRD. For marketing, a GRI-aligned report is written for investors and regulators first, so a headline number pulled from it for a sustainability marketing campaign needs the same context it had in the report, not less.
CSRD
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or CSRD, is an EU law requiring detailed, audited sustainability reporting from companies over certain size thresholds. The EU’s Omnibus simplification package, in force since March 18, 2026, raised those thresholds to more than 1,000 employees and 450 million euros in revenue, removing roughly 80 percent of the companies previously in scope, and pushed some reporting years back to 2028. For marketing, that means fewer companies report directly, but their larger customers and investors further up the chain often still do, and will still ask their suppliers for the same data.
ESG
ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, the categories investors and other stakeholders use to evaluate a company’s non-financial performance and risk. It has no single legal definition, which is part of why the term gets used loosely, and rules like CSRD exist partly to turn it into specific, comparable data points. In sustainability marketing, ESG alone is a category, not a claim, so a page that says a company “cares about ESG” is not saying anything a buyer or regulator can check. See how ESG brand positioning turns the category into claims specific enough to hold up.
Certification
B Corp certification
B Corp certification, run by the nonprofit B Lab, verifies that a company meets a standard for social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. In 2026, B Lab rolled out its biggest overhaul of the standard in nearly 20 years, replacing the old requirement to score 80 points on the B Impact Assessment with tiered requirements across seven Impact Topics, due at Year 0, Year 3 and Year 5. Companies recertifying in 2026 get a 12 month extension to complete the move. For marketing, a B Corp claim made from now on is worth dating, since certified means something different depending on which version of the standard it refers to.
1% for the Planet
1% for the Planet is a membership network in which companies commit to donating at least 1 percent of annual sales, not profit, directly to approved environmental nonprofit partners. It was founded in 2002 by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia and Craig Mathews of Blue Ribbon Flies. Members submit donation receipts and revenue documentation to stay certified, and the member directory is public. For marketing, that makes “1% for the Planet member” a specific, checkable claim, which is safer to feature prominently in sustainability marketing than a vaguer giving statement.
Climate Neutral
Climate Neutral Certified was a label from a nonprofit verifying that a company had measured, reduced and offset its emissions. That organization renamed itself the Change Climate Project in 2023, and starting with its 2025 Standard, replaced the offset-based label with a new one, the Climate Label, which requires certified companies to also set an internal price on carbon and spend that amount on climate solutions rather than only buying offsets. For marketing, that makes “Climate Neutral Certified” an older name, so a company still using the badge should confirm which certification and which year’s standard is actually behind it.
Digital and web
Green hosting
Green hosting means a web host runs on renewable energy or otherwise verifiably reduces the emissions from its infrastructure. The Green Web Foundation verifies providers using evidence like renewable energy contracts or certificates, no longer accepting offsets alone, and lists verified providers in its directory. For sustainability marketing, that turns “we use green hosting” from an unverifiable claim into one anyone can check by name; see our best green web hosting picks for verified options.
Page weight
Page weight is the total size of everything a browser downloads to render a page, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, fonts and video. A heavier page takes longer to load, costs more for a visitor on a limited data plan, and uses more energy to transmit and display, especially on mobile networks. For marketing, page weight feeds directly into Core Web Vitals and into how a page performs for the audience it is trying to reach, so a heavy hero video can quietly undercut the same sustainability message the page is making; check your own site’s weight with our website carbon checker.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google’s metrics for real-world user experience: Largest Contentful Paint measures loading speed, Interaction to Next Paint measures responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift measures visual stability. Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay as the official metric in March 2024, and Google considers a good score to be 200 milliseconds or less at the 75th percentile of a site’s visitors. In sustainability marketing, Core Web Vitals are also a Google ranking signal, so a slow, heavy page is a search visibility problem before it is anything else.
Sustainable web design
Sustainable web design means building and running websites to reduce their environmental footprint, mainly by cutting page weight, unnecessary data transfer and server energy use, without making the site less usable or accessible. The World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Sustainability Guidelines, structured similarly to its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, are the emerging reference standard for how to do it. For marketing, that means the sustainability story and the site performance story are the same project, not two separate ones; see our sustainable web design work for what that looks like in practice.
AI search visibility
AI search visibility is whether and how a brand gets described, cited or recommended inside AI-generated answers, in tools like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, instead of ranked in a list of links. It is newer and less settled than traditional SEO, and Google’s own guidance has pushed back on some popular tactics, including llms.txt files, as unproven for improving how often a brand gets cited. For sustainability marketing, that means the same accurate, well-sourced claims this glossary is built around are also the raw material an AI system needs to describe a brand correctly.
Frequently asked questions about sustainability marketing
What is the difference between greenwashing and a green claim?
A green claim is any statement about environmental impact, and it can be accurate and well-supported. Greenwashing is what happens when a green claim is broader, vaguer or less true than what the company actually does. The claim is not the problem; the gap between the claim and the evidence is.
Do EU rules like CSRD or the Green Claims Directive apply if my company only sells in the United States?
If you only sell to US customers with no EU operations, CSRD and the EU’s consumer claims rules do not apply to you directly. They can still matter if a larger customer, investor or partner further up your supply chain is subject to them, since companies in scope often ask their own suppliers for the same data. The Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides are the standard that applies directly to US marketing claims.
What is the difference between carbon neutral and net zero?
Carbon neutral means net emissions equal zero, which can be reached mostly through offsetting. Net zero requires cutting most emissions first, in line with the 1.5 degree pathway defined by the Science Based Targets initiative, and addressing only what is left through permanent removal. The two are not interchangeable claims.
Does my company need B Corp certification or a 1% for the Planet membership to market itself as sustainable?
No. Certifications are one way to make a claim easy to verify, but plenty of companies run credible sustainability programs without a certification badge. What matters for sustainability marketing is that whatever you say, certified or not, can be substantiated if someone asks.
Do Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions apply to a small or mid-sized company?
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol categories apply at any size, but formal reporting requirements like CSRD generally only apply above certain revenue and employee thresholds. A smaller company can still measure its own Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions voluntarily, and increasingly needs to if a larger customer asks for that data as a supplier.
Does a faster, lighter website actually count as a sustainability practice?
Yes. Page weight and hosting both affect the energy used to load a site, which is why page weight, green hosting and Core Web Vitals are grouped together in this sustainability marketing glossary. It is also one of the few sustainability practices that improves search visibility and user experience at the same time.
Kurt Whitt
Planet Media
Founder and CEO of Planet Media, a sustainability focused marketing agency. 25+ years helping purpose driven brands grow through strategy, storytelling and design.
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