Dr Sayed Elhoushy: Stop Telling People to Change - What Sustainability Marketing Gets Wrong About Behaviour

Most organisations begin their sustainability journey for one reason - they have to. Regulation arrives, reporting frameworks tighten, claims scrutiny increases, and legal risk rises. Compliance forces action, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Dr Sayed Elhoushy sees compliance as a legitimate entry point, but only if businesses recognise what comes next, because compliance is a beginning, and not a destination. The danger of stopping at reporting Across Europe and the UK, regulatory pressure is intensifying. The implications of frameworks like green claims regulation, advertising scrutiny, and evidence-based environmental communications are reshaping sustainability marketing. This is forcing businesses to examine language more carefully, which is long overdue. Sayed highlights a critical issue: over 50% of environmental claims have historically contained vague, misleading, or unsubstantiated elements. That’s not just a communications problem; it’s a trust problem, and once trust erodes, rebuilding it becomes exponentially harder. The four-question green claims filter For organisations trying to communicate responsibly, Sayed offers a practical framework. Before making any sustainability claim, ask: 1. Are we using loaded buzzwords? “Sustainable” “Green” “Eco-friendly” “100% natural” These terms trigger scrutiny immediately. 2. Do we have evidence? Not assumptions Not intention Evidence Data, methodology, verification, traceability. 3. Has this been independently checked? For larger organisations, internal validation is no longer enough; third-party verification matters. 4. Have we considered the full sustainability picture? This is where many brands fail. The palm oil paradox Sayed pointed to one of sustainability’s classic examples. A retailer launches a “No Palm Oil” campaign. At first glance, it appears environmentally responsible, deforestation concerns are real, consumer support follows, but deeper analysis reveals complexity. Removing palm oil may: Harm smallholder farmers Disrupt local economies Shift demand to potentially less efficient alternatives Create unintended supply-chain consequences This is what sustainability professionals call spillover effects, where solving one problem can create another, and marketers must understand these dynamics before communicating solutions. Sustainability is not single-issue optimisation This is perhaps the most important mindset shift, as many organisations still approach sustainability through isolated metrics such as carbon, packaging, water and waste. Each matters, but sustainability is inherently systemic. As Sayed reminds his students, true sustainability requires balancing: Environmental outcomes Social outcomes Economic outcomes Success in one dimension cannot justify harm in another. This is where simplistic claims collapse. From compliance to transformation One of Sayed’s most useful teaching tools is the POST framework: Problem - define the real challenge Opportunity - identify where positive change can emerge Strength - assess capabilities already available Transformation - c reate actionable pathways forward The final step is the one most organisations skip - transformation. Because transformation requires more than reporting, it demands redesign, new thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and strategic courage. Why marketers matter here Historically, sustainability has often sat in specialist teams, but transformation cannot happen in silos. It requires marketing, operations, finance, product, and leadership to speak a common language. This is something Sayed is actively building through sustainability marketing education at Queen Mary, helping students understand that sustainability is not a departmental responsibility. It’s an organisational capability. The next phase The brands that thrive in the next decade will not be those best at sustainability storytelling; they’ll be the ones best at sustainability redesign. Communication still matters, but communication must follow substance. The question for every marketer is no longer: “How do we talk about sustainability?” It is: How do we help create business models worth talking about?

For years, sustainability and marketing have been framed as uneasy bedfellows. One pushes for reduced consumption; the other, supposedly, exists to increase it. This tension has shaped countless conversations inside boardrooms, classrooms, and agency strategy sessions. Can marketing ever truly be sustainable? When I recently spoke with Dr. Sayed Elhoushy, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Queen Mary University of London, he offered a deceptively simple answer: It depends entirely on how we choose to practise marketing That distinction matters more than most organisations realise The overconsumption accusation The criticism isn’t unfounded Traditional marketing has often operated as an amplification system for overconsumption, encouraging people to buy more, upgrade faster, replace sooner, and equate ownership with identity. Seen through this lens, marketing has undeniably contributed to environmental pressure. Sayed ’s own sustainability journey began with witnessing this firsthand. During field training in a large hotel early in his career, he encountered industrial-scale food waste leaving restaurant kitchens every day; the scale shocked him. That moment became the beginning of his research into sustainable consumer behaviour and food waste reduction, work that now informs his teaching and published research. But his conclusion wasn’t that marketing should be abandoned; it was that it should be reimagined. Marketing as a behaviour-shaping discipline If your definition of marketing is “advertising designed to sell more products,” sustainability and marketing will always clash. If your definition is broader, i.e. creating, communicating, and delivering value, then marketing becomes one of the most powerful tools available for sustainability transformation. That’s because marketers understand: Behavioural triggers Narrative framing Habit formation Social norms Cultural meaning-making These are exactly the tools sustainability requires. The challenge isn’t whether marketing belongs in sustainability; the challenge is whether marketers are willing to evolve their role. The food waste lesson One of Sayed’s most revealing examples comes from food waste research conducted with communities in Tower Hamlets. On paper, households are responsible for around 60% of food waste at the consumer level. That statistic seems to point to an obvious solution of changing consumer behaviour. But when speaking directly with households, another story emerged. People weren’t carelessly wasting food, but they were consistently buying more than they intended, even when entering supermarkets with shopping lists. The real culprit was a retail environment engineered to influence purchasing decisions through promotions, layout design, visual cues, scarcity framing, and behavioural nudges. This reframes the problem entirely. It’s not simply about educating individuals; it’s about recognising the systems that shape them. That’s where marketing becomes central. Stop responsibilising the consumer One of the most damaging tendencies in sustainability communication is what might be called responsibility dumping. You’ve seen it: Fly less Waste less Buy better Recycle more Choose wisely None of these messages is inherently wrong, but the problem is when they imply that sustainability failure rests primarily with individual consumers. As Sayed notes, people are increasingly fatigued by being told they alone must solve systemic problems. Eventually, communication fatigue becomes disengagement, then scepticism and then outright resistance. This is one reason sustainability messaging so often fails, not because audiences don’t care, but because they feel unfairly burdened. A better model: redesign the system One of the most compelling examples we discussed was Stroodles. Rather than persuading consumers to make “better” decisions around single-use plastic cutlery, the company redesigned the product entirely by creating edible utensils. No behaviour-change lecture required, no guilt-based messaging, no decision fatigue, just a fundamentally better system design. This is sustainability marketing at its best, not persuasion, but transformation. The marketer’s new brief The future of sustainability marketing is not about making unsustainable systems sound responsible. It’s about helping organisations redesign value creation itself. That means asking harder questions:  Are we solving the problem upstream? Are we changing products, not just campaigns? Are we reducing decision friction? Are we creating behavioural ease? Are we designing for better defaults? This is a fundamentally more ambitious role for marketing and a far more meaningful one. The marketers who embrace it won’t simply communicate sustainability, they’ll help create it.

In the final part of our conversation with Deepa Rao, we look at the end-game of digital sustainability: accountability. If you think your 100-page sustainability report is gathering dust on a shelf, think again. The AI is reading it, and it's looking for contradictions.

As companies turn to Artificial Intelligence to solve their "data drowning" problem, a new set of risks is emerging. Deepa calls it a "Deep Irony." We are using carbon-intensive technology to solve carbon problems.

I recently sat down with Deepa Rao, a Chartered Accountant and internal auditor who found herself at the forefront of the sustainability revolution before it even had a formal name. Today, we explore how her background in risk and audit is shaping the future of "must-have" sustainability.

In the final part of our conversation, Ashley John moves beyond the "carbon tunnel vision" that traps many sustainability professionals. While measuring emissions is vital, Ashley argues that true digital sustainability must account for the social impact: the people behind the screens, the accessibility of information, and the ethics of the tools we use. Beyond "carbon myopia" For many, "sustainability" is synonymous with "carbon footprint." But as Ashley points out, focusing solely on emissions is a form of tunnel vision. "We’re dealing with people," Ashley says. "It’s about the social aspects of sustainability; engaging with communities in a way where they can actually read and understand what’s on your website." To make this "doing the right thing" accessible to everyone, Ashley has committed to a "freemium" model for his suite of tools. "A lot of companies are priced out of doing the right thing. With EcoPigs , you can monitor one website for free, forever." A toolkit for radical transparency Ashley hasn't just stopped at website emissions. He has developed an entire ecosystem of tools designed to strip away the "fluff" and get to the truth: Noissme.com: A carbon accounting tool (emission spelt backwards) that simplifies Scope 1, 2, and 3 reporting. "I found other tools inundated users with irrelevant questions about refrigerant gases or bioenergy. If you're a creative agency in a shared office, you don't need that. Noisssme strips away the noise." Swynx: A tool for developers that looks at "code health." It identifies "dead code" and "bloat" that waste energy, while remaining completely air-gapped for security. Scope 3 Clarity: Ashley is pushing for a focus on Scope 3, the indirect emissions that make up 90% of a company’s impact, rather than just the "tip of the iceberg" Scope 1 and 2 metrics that companies use to look green. Oynk SE: the social enterprise Perhaps the most exciting development is the launch of Oynk SE (Social Enterprise) . In Part 2, we discussed the JEDI (Justice, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion) requirements for B Corp. One of those requirements is that websites must be tested by people with real living disabilities. In partnership with Tom Cliff of Cafe Track, Ashley is creating a network of neurodivergent and disabled testers to provide manual audits of websites. "We’re going to give these people real money. It’s life-changing for people who have been ignored or sidelined. They get to provide qualified feedback: 'I struggled to press tab here' or 'it took too long to contact you.' It creates a circular economy of meaningful work and accessible design." Dirty by design: challenging the status quo Ashley is now taking his findings to the page in his upcoming book, Dirty by Design , currently being released chapter-by-chapter on Substack. The book is an antagonist's look at the "assumptions" that have governed digital sustainability for the last decade. Ashley is openly challenging the established giants like the Green Web Foundation, arguing that their methods are based on outdated data and "best guesses." "I’m not being malicious," Ashley clarifies. "I’m saying: let’s raise the bar. If you’ve had ten years to fix your model and I’ve hammered what you’ve done in 18 months, did you really care? Or was it just more subconscious greenwashing?" The bottom line Ashley’s mission is clear: move away from "tick-box" sustainability and toward a defensible, science-based, and human-centric framework. By making tools free, empowering the disabled community, and demanding accuracy over assumptions, he is rewriting the rules of the digital road. As Ashley puts it: "Everything is there. It’s transparent. If you want to argue with me about the metrics, come to the website and let’s talk. My method is correct because it’s based on fact, not fiction." This concludes our three-part series on digital sustainability. For more insights into marketing with integrity, subscribe to Sustainability Marketing Survival Conversations.

In Part 1 , Ashley John , founder of Oynk and EcoPigs , pulled back the curtain on the flaws of standard digital carbon calculators. But as our conversation continued, it became clear that digital sustainability isn't just about carbon, it’s about a broader sense of corporate honesty. If your website is the "front door" to your business, what happens when the welcome mat is a lie? Can we trust you? Ashley has coined a powerful term for the modern marketer: the Integrity Proxy . It’s a simple litmus test for brand authenticity. "If someone wants to know about you, they go to your website first because it’s non-committal," Ashley explains. "If you claim to care about the planet and people, but your website has terrible emissions and fails basic accessibility standards, how can you be trusted?" For Ashley, a website that ignores these factors isn't just a technical failure; it’s a breach of brand promise. To combat this, Oynk builds with "100% clarity." Every site includes a transparent report and a live "pig badge" that users can click to see the actual methodology and real-time data. "How can we trust anything else you tell us if your own website isn't even accurate?" Beyond carbon: the rise of JEDI The conversation in sustainability is rapidly shifting toward Scope 3 reporting and social impact. Ashley notes that B Corp’s V2 model now includes a critical section called JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion). This isn't just a "nice to have" anymore; it’s a requirement. For new B Corps, accessibility is now baked into the certification process. This shift aligns perfectly with Ashley’s new framework for digital excellence: PEER. The Four Pillars of PEER: Performance: Speed isn't just for UX; every second of load time can cost you 7% of your traffic. Emissions: Real-time tracking of the digital footprint. Experience: Ensuring the site works for everyone, regardless of ability. Ranking: High-performing, low-emission sites naturally rank better on Google. "When I talked to people about 'sustainability,' they didn't always care," Ashley admits. "But when I talk about a website that ranks higher, loads in under a second, and eliminates bounce rates? Now they're listening." The high bar of accessibility One of the most challenging aspects of the JEDI metrics is the Flesch-Kincaid reading level . To reach the gold standard (AAA), website content should be readable by someone at grade 10 or under. This requires a radical simplification of language that many brands find painful. Ashley shares a recent example: "We had to change 'make a positive change' to 'make a real change.' Why? Because 'positive' has too many syllables. We even struggled with the word 'business' vs 'firm.' It’s a constant back-and-forth to ensure no one is excluded." This level of detail extends to colour ratios. To meet AAA standards, you need a 7:1 contrast ratio . "I'm eating my own dog food here," Ashley laughs. "I had to rework my own Oynk branding because my yellow and white combo didn't meet the ratio. I can't tell clients to do it if I won't do it myself." A meaningful digital future For Ashley, this mission is personal. As someone with autism and ADHD, he understands how exclusionary a poorly designed digital space can be. "There are people who don't have the capacity to navigate a 'boring' or overly complex site. Are we excluding them from the workplace? From reading the company intranet? From understanding an email?" By combining EcoPigs' live emissions tracking with the JEDI accessibility framework, Ashley is building more than just websites; he's building a structure for digital integrity. In an era of "subconscious greenwashing," the only way forward is through radical, data-backed transparency. Digital sustainability is no longer just about the environment; it’s about ensuring the digital world is open, honest, and accessible to everyone.