La última milla del ‘greenwashing’: cuando callar también confunde al consumidor

A new rule takes center stage in corporate conversations, set to begin on September 27. This is part of a directive from the EU's Consumer Empowerment Transition Directive, aimed at tightening protections against misleading practices and ensuring clearer, more reliable information for consumers. At first glance, it may seem like just another piece in the complex regulatory framework on sustainability.

But the real issue isn't just compliance. It's about trust, and trust is one of a company's most valuable and delicate assets. For years, sustainability has been the story companies have wanted to tell. It made sense, given the climate transition, market transformation, and evolving expectations from investors, professionals, and consumers.

Communicating progress became essential. However, every story risks falling apart when reality outpaces the narrative. What once was a conversation about purpose has become a conversation about credibility. Because sustainability is no longer judged by intentions; it's evaluated by evidence. The new regulation arises from an uncomfortable reality.

Consumers want to make better choices. They want to reward companies making progress. They want to support products and services contributing positively to the ecological transition. But often, they don't have the necessary information or struggle to understand it among a syndrome of sustainable data. The European Commission found that over half of environmental claims analyzed contained vague, misleading, or insufficiently substantiated messages.

The result is paradoxical: the more social interest in sustainability, the harder it is to distinguish real commitment from mere appearances. The problem is no longer a lack of information, but an abundance of inaccurate information. Green. Responsible. Natural. Circular. Climate neutral. For years, we've lived with expressions that create a positive immediate perception, but not always a real understanding of what is mentioned.

The new directive aims precisely to reduce this distance between perception and reality. It requires evidence, clarity, context, and the ability to demonstrate what is communicated. That goal is reasonable. Trust isn't built on adjectives; it's built on facts. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret this regulation solely as a consumer regulation.

It's also a reputation regulation. From now on, the distance between what an organization does, what it says, and what its stakeholders understand takes on a completely different relevance. It's no longer enough to have a valuable initiative; it must be demonstrated. It's no longer enough to have an ambitious goal; you must show the path to achieve it.

It's no longer enough to talk about impact; you must explain how it's measured. Sustainability has thus moved from a narrative-dominated territory to a space where narrative, data, evidence, governance, and strategy must coexist coherently. And this has a deep reputational dimension because many corporate controversies in recent years didn't necessarily arise from the absence of actions, but from the gap between expectations generated and the perceived reality.

The Greek myth of Procustes, who forced guests into an iron bed, is particularly relevant. If the traveler was too tall, Procustes cut off their limbs. If they were too short, he stretched them to fit. The problem isn't the bed. The problem is trying to make all reality adapt to it. The comparison is apt because corporate sustainability is rarely uniform.

Some companies are just beginning their transformation, others have been investing for decades, innovating, and developing solutions that will eventually become future standards. The new regulation hits the right note by demanding rigor, transparency, and verifiability. The question is to avoid, in the legitimate effort to combat greenwashing, ending up with an environment where all organizations must communicate exactly the same, regardless of their maturity level, innovation, or ambition.

Because corporate reality is more complex than any regulatory framework designed to order it, and the true success of a rule lies not in simplifying that reality, but in helping to explain it better. Most conversations about this new regulation have focused on how to avoid greenwashing. That's logical, as it's one of its fundamental objectives.

But there's another less visible phenomenon that could accelerate from September 2026 and deserves much more attention: greenhushing. In other words, the conscious decision to minimize, reduce, or even eliminate sustainability communications out of fear of scrutiny, controversy, or regulatory risk. At first glance, it may seem like a prudent response.

Not always, though. Greenhushing can just as easily confuse consumers by hiding the reality. In both cases, the ability to distinguish disappears. And if both greenwashing and greenhushing confuse consumers, they prevent the distinction from being made. And if we protect ourselves from both, we prevent the distinction from being made altogether.