How To Build Sustainable Brands That Shoppers Trust

Sustainable brands build environmental and social responsibility into their products, operations, and identity, and these commitments shape how the business actually runs. That can mean sourcing recycled materials, offering carbon-neutral shipping, committing to fair labor standards, or designing products to last longer and be repaired rather than replaced.

Sustainability can also be a smart business decision. According to 2025 Statista data, 60% of US millennials and 58% of Gen Z consumers preferred to buy from sustainable brands. But if you want to earn consumer trust as a sustainable brand, you’ll have to make a meaningful commitment. 

Here’s what it takes to build a sustainable brand, including how to define your mission, build policies into your operations, and communicate your efforts without greenwashing. 

What are sustainable brands?

Sustainable brands incorporate environmentally and socially conscious policies into every stage of their operations, using sustainability goals to guide sourcing, production, packaging, distribution, daily operations, and communication practices. In business, sustainability isn’t limited to environmental issues. Operating sustainably can mean setting transparent goals around resource consumption, labor practices, and community impact. 

To address sustainability holistically, businesses often use structures like ESG, an acronym for environmental, social, and governance, or Triple Bottom Line, a framework built on the pillars of people, profit, and planet. Both measure social and environmental impact, but they serve different purposes. ESG is a tracking and reporting standard; Triple Bottom Line offers broader philosophical guidance, usually for internal use.

Sharing those goals and your progress toward them is central to building consumer trust. This is particularly important at a time when shoppers are increasingly skeptical of brands that pay lip service to the environment without establishing real policies, a practice known as greenwashing. A 2025 Capgemini survey found that 62% of consumers believe companies are greenwashing, up from 33% in 2023. 

How to build a sustainable brand

1. Define your sustainability mission
2. Build sustainability into your business
3. Monitor and improve your ESG metrics

Building a sustainable brand is a long-term project. Here’s how to define a sustainability mission, build it into your daily operations, and track your progress as a small and growing business:

1. Define your sustainability mission

Sustainability means something different for every brand; define what it means to yours early, based on your products and industry. Then attach metrics, so the goal becomes a benchmark your team can work toward and communicate clearly. 

A consumer packaged goods (CPG) company marketing a sustainable laundry detergent might prioritize eliminating harsh chemicals and using recycled materials for packaging, a goal it could sharpen into a commitment to 100% recycled materials across the entire product line. A business without a physical product, such as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, might instead focus on operating on clean energy and office waste reduction, perhaps pledging to source 50% of energy from renewable sources.

Research your industry and competitors. Identify any problems endemic to your sector and look for ways to solve them. When Phantila Phataraprasit launched the sustainable furniture company Sabai Design, she looked for ways that she could do things differently. 

“For us at Sabai, sustainability means looking at the entire picture,” she says on Shopify Masters. “It includes addressing the amount of waste that the furniture industry creates and addressing the actual materials that go into furniture products.” 

2. Build sustainability into your business

Building sustainability into your business means incorporating your values into the foundation of your brand. “It’s really important to think about sustainability starting from the design phase,” Phantila says, so you can build sustainable practices from the ground up. “If you aren’t thinking about that in the beginning, it’s hard to address problems,” as well as revise and restructure processes later on. 

Review each stage of your operation and consider how it impacts your sustainability goals, then look for opportunities to build supporting policies into the way you work. Depending on your business, that could involve:

• Sourcing. Sustainable sourcing can mean choosing recycled, renewable, or non-toxic materials, or curating product offerings that align with your values. You may also consider material production methods, such as farming practices and factory working standards. Sustainable jewelry brand Their Jewelry doesn’t work with mines that put workers’ health at risk by using mercury to refine gold.

• Product design. Design modifications can help products meet sustainability goals by reducing waste or energy consumption. Look for ways to limit scrap material produced, extend the product life cycle, or reduce shipping weight. Sabai uses modular design to make product repairs simpler. 

• Packaging and shipping. Research different packaging and shipping materials. Look for ways to cut down on the amount, incorporate recyclable or compostable products, or reduce box size by packing products efficiently. The Shopify Planet app helps with carbon-neutral shipping, calculating emissions based on shipping distance and funding carbon removal companies to offset the impact.

• Office and warehouse operations. Introduce an office recycling program, turn off overhead lights at night, and encourage employees to limit printed memos or presentations.

3. Monitor and improve your ESG metrics

Track your progress against the metrics you’ve set. A regular reporting cadence keeps your team accountable internally and gives you current, credible numbers to share externally when you talk about your progress publicly.

Common ESG metrics include:

• Total greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint

• Total energy consumption

• Percentage of energy from renewable sources

• Total volume of packaging used

• Percentage of material from recycled sources

• Labor standards throughout the supply chain

• Total dollars invested in community projects

Track and report on as many metrics as you can to give your customers the full picture of your brand’s sustainability goals and progress. 

Tips for building trust as a sustainable brand

• Be specific about your policies
• Highlight your certifications
• Practice transparent communication

Once your sustainable practices are in place, build trust by giving consumers an honest, specific account of what you’re doing and why. Here’s how:

Be specific about your policies

Any business can design a green logo and use leaf icons as bullet points. What distinguishes an authentic brand identity is specificity: explaining why sustainability matters to your business, and what you’ve changed because of it.

Inder Bedi, founder of sustainable fashion brand Bedi Studios, warns that using broad, vague terms like sustainable or vegan may not be enough to win over critical consumers. On Shopify Masters, Inder says that “one of the positive things that we’re seeing more in 2026 is that consumers are no longer saying, ’Oh, it says sustainable, so it must be great.’ They’re actually asking, well, what does that mean?” 

To help answer these questions, Bedi Studios provides details about their materials on their website. 

Highlight your certifications

Sharing statistics, percentages, and certifications helps prove you’re taking meaningful action. Bedi Studios’ materials page explains that the company uses fabrics certified by OEKO-TEX, a textile industry standard verifying the products are free from harmful substances. 

It also shares facts about the materials it uses. For example, “Every 10,000 tons of ECONYL raw material saves 70,000 barrels of crude oil compared to conventional nylon.”

Third-party certifications help verify your sustainability claims. Include certification logos on your website, on packaging, and in marketing materials to show consumers you’ve taken action.

Practice transparent communication 

Share honest updates with your community. Reporting measures like an annual sustainability report prove you’re working toward sustainable operations, not just marketing them.

Be open about the obstacles you hit and how you’re working through them. Candor shows consumers you’re not sugar-coating the complexity of running a sustainable business. If you need to amend a goal, explain your reasoning. Their Jewelry cofounder Alexander Ludwig considers this kind of transparency essential for building trust. On Shopify Masters, he describes the value of acknowledging imperfections and telling customers, “Here’s where we are right now, and here’s where we’re trying to go.” Their Jewelry works primarily in recycled gold, but Ludwig is candid that recycling alone doesn’t end mining. “Our partnership with the Artisanal Gold Council was really important to us because we recognized that just because we’re operating in recycled gold, it doesn’t mean that mining just suddenly doesn’t exist.”