Public commitment
peer-reviewed
One Earth’s formal commitment to evidence-based, plain-English sustainability. We’ve walked away from briefs that asked us to overstate, and we’ll walk away again. Here’s what that means in practice — and how to flag concerns about anything we publish.
Position statement
Sustainability claims have legal, reputational and ethical weight. Overstatement isn’t a marketing decision – it’s a misrepresentation, and it puts our clients at risk of enforcement under the CMA Green Claims Code, ASA rulings, and the EU Empowering Consumers Directive.
Our policy is straightforward: every claim we draft must be substantiated by data we’ve seen, methodology we can defend, and evidence that would survive an auditor’s scrutiny.
Five commitments
01
‘Eco-friendly’, ‘sustainable’, ‘green’, ‘carbon-neutral’ – these don’t mean anything on their own. We will not publish claims that rely on these terms unless they’re defined, evidenced and date-stamped.
02
Offsetting alone doesn’t make a business carbon-neutral. We won’t draft narratives that imply otherwise. We’ll always require a credible reduction pathway alongside any offset commitment.
03
If your scope 3 is large and we’ve only measured scope 1 & 2, we will say so. Selective reporting that creates a misleading impression is greenwashing – even if every individual number is true.
04
‘Will be net-zero by 2030’ is not a claim – it’s an intention. We won’t draft it as a claim unless there’s a costed, milestoned plan with assurance behind it.
05
Our test: would this hold up under auditor scrutiny, regulator review, and a hostile press cycle? If not, we redraft.
We’ll send you anonymised drafts of disclosures we’ve written — including the language we’ve pushed back on, and how we re-wrote it. The most useful 20 minutes of homework you can do before commissioning anyone.
Get in touch with the One Earth Education team!
