Make sustainability choices clear

Welcome to Sustainable EcoDesigns Insights.

People deserve to know how the products they buy are made and what those choices mean for the environment and their communities. But if you make or sell a product, you know how much can get lost between a decision you make with a supplier and the few words a customer reads on a label.

Imagine a small jam maker that buys strawberries from two nearby farms during harvest and uses frozen fruit from other suppliers the rest of the year. What should the label say? And what would it take for that relationship with local growers to last?

Accountability starts with asking customers what they understand by “locally sourced” and checking purchase and batch records before using those words. When the source changes, someone on the team needs to know which jars are affected and make sure the information customers see is accurate.

Transparency makes that work visible. The jam maker can tell customers when it buys from nearby farms and where the fruit comes from the rest of the year. That gives shoppers something specific to weigh when they decide what to buy.

Stewardship shapes the choices behind the label. The team can talk with growers before the season about what they can harvest and how much the business can commit to buying. It can ask employees who receive and prepare the fruit what would make sourcing easier to track. And if it photographs the work, it can ask the people involved how they want to be represented.

Each principle makes the others stronger. Good records make it possible to explain a decision clearly. Sharing that explanation invites questions that can improve the next decision. Over time, more predictable orders can help nearby growers plan for the season and sustain relationships in the community.

Employees can also see how their day-to-day decisions affect people beyond the business. In a survey of 827 employees at North American food and agriculture organizations, people who saw their employer as socially and environmentally responsible tended to find their work more meaningful. Glavas and Kelley, Business Ethics Quarterly

There’s a connection to customer loyalty, too. McKinsey and NielsenIQ found higher rates of repeat buying among U.S. packaged goods brands that made most of their sales from products carrying environmental or social responsibility claims. The study tracked who came back, and the reasons those customers returned remain an open question. For our jam maker, that’s a question worth asking directly. McKinsey and NielsenIQ

That’s what we’ll explore here. We’ll share interview questions you can take into a customer conversation, examples of how to check a claim against your records, and ideas for what to photograph or film when you want to show the work behind a product.

If you make, market, or sell a product and want to give people clearer information about what they’re buying, subscribe to get new guides by email.