How to Talk About Your Sustainability in a Post-Greenwashing World

At the end of September 2026, The EU introduced the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, also known as ECGT or ‘EmpCo’. This anti-greenwashing legislation bans any sustainability-related claims that may be misleading, and explicitly covers any business engaging in commercial practices towards EU consumers, regardless of where they are in the world.

Under these restrictions, it may seem easier to keep quiet about your sustainability work (known as greenhushing), but this would be a mistake. This is an opportunity for a significant, industry-wide reset; it’s our chance to turn the word “sustainable” into something real and concrete, giving businesses sturdy foundations for their marketing messaging and allowing customers to feel confident in where they choose to spend their money. 

By raising our collective expectations through legislation like the ECGT, we can celebrate genuine progress and, ultimately, raise standards across the industry. 

Let’s dive into what effective, ECGT-compliant communications can look like.

Use sustainability to sell what matters to diners

As Grace Greensitt (Founder of the Global Sustainability Index) said in our recent webinar, “For most people, sustainability is not the reason that they’re going to choose your venue. […] Instead of asking, how do we get our customers to care about sustainability, we should be asking, how can we use sustainability to strengthen the things they already care about?” In practical terms, this means building strong messaging around provenance, seasonality, local culture and heritage, and the people behind the food.

Homing in on F&B is more effective than highlighting environmental metrics. While initiatives like reducing waste, water use and energy use are important, messaging around these metrics can make customers feel disinterested. In contrast, moving beyond those metrics to showcase a more holistic approach to sustainability enables restaurants and other hospitality operations to forge stronger relationships with their guests through rich, evocative storytelling, creating a meal experience that is both highly localised and truly unforgettable. 

When we bring sustainability into the food and beverage space, this is where we see real impact. Food connects guests to a destination more immediately than any other part of their experience — in fact, food has become a core part of planning travel experiences, with 82% of travellers prioritising high-quality restaurants when booking hotels; 71% of Gen Z and 74% of Millennial travellers view dining as a core part of their travel experience. This is what makes provenance one of the most powerful themes to build your communications around.

Provenance is powerful

Today’s diner is hungry for dishes that feel authentic, providing a tangible connection to the region — landscape, season, people, culture — and 64% now actively choose distinctively local experiences over fine dining restaurants. In Marriott’s 2027 Future of Food Asia Pacific report, 95% of properties surveyed across 20 markets pointed to local signature dishes as “the biggest trend in my market this year”, with 79% introducing new local ingredients to their menus as a result. Weaving this into your messaging can help your guests experience their destination in a more substantial, more memorable way. This is an especially powerful tactic for hotels, where more time spent with each guest and a greater variety of touchpoints mean more opportunities to celebrate provenance and provide a real sense of place.

How this is framed is important. As Grace explained, telling your customers that you source ingredients locally is great, but it won’t necessarily bring people in the door. However, if you tell them that menus change with the seasons because your chefs buy directly from nearby farms and serve what’s best at that moment, suddenly the message is about freshness and flavour. “The sustainability piece there hasn’t disappeared,” she said, “but now it’s doing a job. It’s proving to me why your food is better.” An effective example of this can be seen in the phrasing used by Brae restaurant in Australia, accompanied by striking food photography: “Our cuisine is ever-evolving, shifting with the rhythm of the weather and seasons. We harvest our working lands daily and complement this with high quality, ethical produce drawn from our local region.”

At Rosetta in Mexico City, the menu is led by the country’s rich natural biodiversity and culinary history, and dishes consciously celebrate Mexican ingredients. Provenance is woven through the experience beyond the plate just as thoughtfully. Everything from the historic building itself to the ceramic plates crafted by local artisans is carefully designed to evoke a sense of Mexican hospitality. The restaurant’s Instagram page shares this attention to detail using stunning-yet-simple photography, focusing on the beauty and appeal inherent in Rosetta’s dishes and interiors.

Highlight The humanity of hospitality

Some of the richest, most compelling narratives that your business has to tell are the human stories behind your offering: your team, your community, the farmers, fishers and producers supplying your restaurant, the local artisan who made the candles on your tables. These stories provide a sense of place that goes beyond the plate, adding a more intimate, emotive component.

For example, in the UK, Apricity’s website has a page dedicated to their suppliers. This is more than a list, but a collection of origin stories, focusing on the people behind each ingredient and the values they hold. Among others, readers can meet an olive oil company going above and beyond to ensure farmers are paid a fair price; a clothes designer making uniforms in ways that consciously prevent wasted material; a farm in Sussex harvesting vegetables before dawn to ensure maximum freshness; the first female-owned B Corp spirit producer in the country, who had to pivot from a career in shoe design after a tragic accident left her unable to draw; and a seafood merchant working with day-boat fishers to showcase a wider variety of native fish and seafood species. Every story is engrossing and uniquely human — and each one makes the meal experience more appealing.

At Rosa’s Thai in London, UK, messaging on the website uses the co-founder's personal story and childhood experiences to explain why sustainability is important to the brand, making the message feel genuine and deeply relatable. “My life in Thailand was entirely supported by the vegetables we grew on our farm and the local fish and meat from my grandparents’ grocery store. We’d use whatever produce was available and in season. […] My family still live and work on that farm in Khao Kor and to this day it remains unspoilt by deforestation or roads. At Rosa’s, we want to reduce our own impact on the environment by using sustainable suppliers and practices.” This focus on the personal is supported by the practical: clear carbon commitments and details of key suppliers.

Be specific

The ECGT Directive demands that we be specific and unambiguous in our sustainability messaging. “The safest sustainability claim is not the biggest one; it’s the most specific one,” said Grace. “Good sustainability communication is not just good marketing, it’s risk management.” This specificity is a good thing — by being granular and focusing on real actions, stories become less generic and more compelling.

In Bangkok, Haoma restaurant highlights measurable results and behind-the-scenes initiatives on its website, making its sustainability communications more substantial through adding detail. Specific figures and practical examples show how sustainability works in practice, while attractive, colourful illustrations elaborate on the restaurant’s aquaponics system and composting process.

Also in Thailand, Jaras Restaurant at the Intercontinental Phuket uses firm figures to detail its food waste initiatives in an Instagram post, highlighting how the natural fertiliser they create from composted organic waste is donated to nourish the soils in local hotel gardens, farms, schools, municipal organisations and community projects like mangrove restoration. This is an engaging, place-driven story, and one that is also specific and rooted in evidence. Speaking of which…

Show, don’t tell

ECGT demands evidence for your sustainability claims – so use this evidence to construct the story itself. “Instead of saying you work with local suppliers, introduce me to your cheesemaker,” said Grace. “Instead of telling me you’ve reduced your food waste, show me the dish on your menu that’s using an ingredient in a way that’s different to previously.”

In Portugal, venn offers a fantastic example of this. Their website includes a well-developed, interactive guide to how they source their ingredients, with a full producer directory. Curious customers can also find an exploration of under-used Portuguese ingredients with which the kitchen works, suggesting a highly localised culinary experience. On a separate page, ‘What remains’, you’ll find a highly visual guide to how the kitchen prevents food waste, showing the journey for common by-products — coffee grounds, onion skins, tomato pulp — and how these are transformed, ultimately appearing on the menu. This approach works so well because it doesn’t simply tell the diner that the restaurant works to avoid food waste: it reveals the potential of these by-products, emphasising the creativity involved and the deliciousness of their final forms. It’s leveraging sustainability to build desirability.

When Hoppers in the UK made the list for The Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2026, they focused on showing why they won, rather than merely telling their audience that they won. They created a video that went directly to team members to ask, “Why do you like working at Hoppers?”, building the responses into a reel for Instagram. In showing a warm, happy and supportive environment with relaxed, confident staff, the impact of this video is bigger than the responses themselves; it’s effective because of the positive feeling it inspires in the viewer.

This isn’t limited to digital communications, either: don’t underestimate the power of physical design. Desa Potato Head Bali does a fantastic job of sharing its sustainability strategy and progress on its website and in an annual impact report, but the story really comes to life once a guest arrives onsite. Art installations throughout the premises use repurposed, upcycled items alongside native materials to add interest and aesthetic appeal while telling stories that are unique to the island’s history and heritage. Meanwhile, a daily ‘Follow The Waste’ tour offers guests a free experience that showcases the resort’s incredibly comprehensive approach to waste management, turning sustainability into a tangible story that forms an active, engaging part of the guest experience.

Use frameworks the right way

In contrast to many of the ‘green’ labels previously on the market, robust sustainability frameworks — like Food Made Good — have a role to play not only in reassuring customers, but in providing restaurants and hotels with a clear structure. By measuring action against clearly defined criteria, systematic examination turns fragmented efforts into a coherent system, giving operators both credibility and external accountability and raising performance across the sector. At the same time, it gives customers the peace of mind they’re craving, allowing them to choose restaurants and hotels that share their values.

The key is to use these frameworks to underpin the communications you’ve built using the guidelines above; simply slapping the logo on your website or menu is not enough. The framework is the voice of authority that makes your story credible, but it’s not the story itself. “A certification gives you that credibility, but please don’t assume that your customer understands what it means,” said Grace. “You need to translate what sits behind it. Don’t show me the badge — show me what it represents. […] Start using sustainability to prove the story you’re already telling.”

A clear example comes from Catch at The Old Fish Market in Weymouth, UK. Food Made Good is mentioned upfront on their website homepage and Instagram profile, but the restaurant goes further with an article exploring exactly what this means to the team and how Food Made Good underpins what was already central to the brand. Using the FMG Framework, the piece details the key actions, strong commitments and overall ethos that earned the business three stars.

If you’re looking for further details on what ECGT means for your sustainability communications, watch our webinar on what strong, effective sustainability communications should look like in this new, post-greenwashing era, including valuable insights from Grace Greensitt, Founder of the Global Sustainability Index. Watch the recording here.  

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