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Green brands: how sustainable really are they?
Many of us keep an eye out for brands that appear to offer more sustainable choices when we're shopping. But while the marketing often looks good, it can be difficult to know what's genuine.
In February 2023 we asked over 4,000 Which? members about their perceptions of sustainable brands. Members who answered our survey told us which brands they consider to be more sustainable choices and gave us their reasons why.
Some companies stood out as common choices from all sorts of retail industries, including beauty products, cleaning essentials, clothes and groceries.
While 57% of members told us they felt they only had a 'fair' understanding of sustainability, in practice they had a pretty sound idea of how brands were trying to be more sustainable.
Some of the top reasons brands were viewed as more sustainable included their farming practices; the use of non-toxic ingredients; their approach to packaging and refills; certification such as Fairtrade or organic, and whether a company contributes to sustainability initiatives using its profits.
But we wanted to know whether these perceptions matched up with reality. We delved deeper into some of the brands that came out well in our survey to find out whether our members' high expectations were justified.
We’ve focused on the beauty, cleaning, clothes and food brands that members highlighted as the most sustainable and looked behind the scenes at those brands’ sustainability initiatives and actions to give you an overview.
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Sustainable beauty brands
Our member survey found that when it comes to beauty and toiletries, the ingredients found in products are important to people when determining a brand’s sustainability.
Beauty products very often contain palm oil, something that consumers are rightly concerned about. Brands that take sustainability seriously should use RSPO-certified palm oil and have detailed palm oil sourcing policies.
Biodegradability is another important factor; these products are often washed down the drain and can end up in our water supplies, where they can have detrimental effects on the environment. Chemicals of particular concern include parabens, phthalates, PFAS/PFCs and triclosan.
Packaging was also something highlighted by our survey as an important factor in beauty products’ sustainability.
Beauty product packaging can be complex – some items like hand soap pumps can be hard to recycle. The brands members viewed as more sustainable either offered refillable packaging, closed loop recycling, solid format products or easily recyclable packaging.
We took a look behind the scenes at four brands in more detail:
For more on chemicals and other pollutants in our water supplies see our guide on how to buy water friendly products. We've also looked more closely at refillable products and how this type of packaging can make a difference.
Sustainable cleaning brands
More often than not, cleaning products are washed away into our sewers. They should go on to sewage treatment works where harmful chemicals are removed, but water companies can bypass these when the system is overloaded – usually this is during periods of heavy rainfall. This means untreated water can find its way into our rivers and seas.
Many water companies have hit the headlines recently with concerning figures around how frequently waste water spills out into natural environments.
Even when water is treated the residue left behind – sewage sludge – is used as fertiliser on UK farmland. Research by the Environment Agency found sludge contaminated with ‘persistent organic pollutants’ and triclosan.
All of this means that it's worth bearing in mind the toxicity of the chemicals you wash away, and seeking out brands that use alternatives.
Household cleaning brands our members believed to be more sustainable tend to focus on naturally derived (sometimes also known as plant-based) ingredients and exclude some of the more harmful persistent chemicals. But are their claims meaningful?
We looked in more depth at the following cleaning brands:
We test detergents in our lab to see how well they measure up on performance. Head to our reviews of laundry detergents and powders, dishwasher tablets, and washing-up liquids to see whether any eco brands performed well enough to become Eco Buys.
Sustainable clothing brands
This is a really key aspect – amongst the churn of fast fashion, the best way to minimise your impact is simply to buy less – which means keeping clothing for many years and wearing and repairing it as much as possible. Three of the five clothing brands that members’ pulled out in our survey as appearing more sustainable offer a repair service.
The materials brands use is important, too. The synthetic plastic fibres commonly used as clothing material are derived from fossil fuels, energy-intensive to produce and frequently end up in landfill. But natural materials aren't off the hook, either. Cotton, for example, needs vast amounts of water to grow, as well as lots of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Organic cotton is a much better choice, although harder (and expensive) to come by.
Outdoor clothing comes with its own issue. Chemicals called PFCs and PFAS are synthetics used for waterproofing by many brands. They are also known as 'forever' chemicals, due to how long, if at all, it takes them to break down. Once released into the environment they can have serious impacts on the natural world and human health.
We looked at the following brands in more detail to see whether their good reputations are justified:
Find out more about: PFAs and avoiding the forever chemicals in waterproof clothing
Sustainable food/drink brands
For most of us, our diet makes up one of the largest portions of our carbon footprint, which means making gradual changes to it can have a lasting impact.
It's hard to generalise about sustainability issues associated with food production, as almost everything we eat or drink comes with its own specific issues to tackle. But they also have things in common – any crop that is grown as a monoculture can have very detrimental effects on biodiversity and soil health.
Our members in our survey rightly identified some key overarching aspects as important. These include farming practices as well as whether brands belong to independent certification schemes such as Soil Association or Fairtrade. They also put some emphasis on the packaging that brands used.
They identified three popular brands deemed to have strong sustainability associations – Clipper, Cafédirect and Quorn.
Coffee and tea farming come with significant ethical issues. Buying Fairtrade (Cafédirect and Clipper both carry Fairtrade certification) goes some way to mitigate against these.
But there are environmental issues too, which apply to any crop that is grown as a monoculture. Both Cafédirect and Clipper products are largely organic, which is better for biodiversity, soil health and water pollution.
Quorn is very different – it's a heavily processed food. Every product the brand makes has been assessed by the Carbon Trust to identify its environmental footprint. It also compares its products to meat alternatives looking at aspects such as water use, land use and carbon, and is often a more environmentally friendly choice.
A lot of sustainability information can be found on food packaging, but the labels and symbols aren't always immediately clear.
Brands we looked at in more detail:
Find out more about what to look out for in our A to Z guide to sustainable food labels.
More on our green brands research
In February 2023 we surveyed 4,083 Which? members to ask them which brands they consider to be more sustainable choices and why.
The brands that members could answer on were preselected based on a previous survey carried out in November 2022 where we asked members to tell us which brands they considered sustainable. The most popular answers formed the list for the second survey.
We took a shortlist of 16 brands from the results of our survey and carried out research into the behind the scenes practices of these companies to determine whether the goodwill of our survey respondents was justifiable.