It’s a positive sign for those of us invested in product sustainability that consumer interest has never been higher. Research consistently shows that a growing proportion of consumers want their purchasing decisions to reflect their environmental and social values and protect their families’ health.
Yet we constantly bump up against the fact that purchasing behavior lags these intentions.
For years, researchers have described this challenge as the “say-do gap,” and the common explanation is that consumers are simply unwilling to change their behavior.
I believe that conclusion misses the mark – and lets us all off the hook. The hard truth is, we are asking consumers to solve a problem that the marketplace itself has not yet addressed.
The Supermarket Test
Consider a simple trip to the grocery store.
Most consumers can distinguish organic produce from conventional, low-sodium soup from regular, and whole milk from nonfat. They may not understand every detail behind those designations, but they generally recognize what they mean and trust that there is a consistent definition behind them.
Now consider an everyday household cleaner, laundry detergent, soap, or personal care product. How easy is it to determine whether one product is genuinely safer, more sustainable, or more responsible than another?
For most people, the answer is: not very easy.
The sustainable products market does not suffer from a lack of effort.
Companies are investing in safer ingredients and sustainable product design; retailers are developing sustainability programs to guide consumers and differentiate products, and certifiers have built rigorous frameworks to address specific environmental and health impacts.
The cumulative effect of these worthwhile efforts, however, is a marketplace that becomes harder for consumers to navigate as more sustainability information appears.
This challenge is increasingly recognized by sustainability practitioners themselves. As Suzanne Shelton, Principal at ERM Marketing & Communications Agency, recently observed: “The sustainable products market desperately needs a common definition.”
I agree.
Before we can scale sustainable purchasing, we need greater agreement on what we mean by a sustainable product.
The Fragmentation Challenge
Recently, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel at the Household & Commercial Products Association (HCPA) Mid-Year Meeting in Washington, D.C. The discussion brought together sustainability leaders from Henkel, Kenvue, Eastman, Aramark, and Arxada.
Collectively, these organizations represent several critical perspectives across the sustainable products value chain, including ingredient suppliers, packaging manufacturers, consumer product manufacturers, and large purchasers.
Despite their different roles, they described the same stubborn challenge of fragmentation.
Manufacturers discussed the difficulty of navigating overlapping requirements, certifications, retailer expectations, and restricted substance lists.
Purchasers described the challenge of evaluating sustainability attributes across categories and suppliers.
Packaging leaders explained the growing complexity created by differing regulations, infrastructure realities, and market expectations.
The theme that emerged was that greater alignment would help companies focus more resources on innovation and less on interpreting competing frameworks.
That discussion reinforced something Green Seal has been hearing across the marketplace: The systems used to define product sustainability leadership are too fragmented to keep up with consumer demand.
Learning from LEED
This challenge is not new. Many markets have gone through similar periods of fragmentation before eventually converging around a shared understanding of leadership.
Green buildings provide one of the clearest examples. The true power of the LEED green building standard was that it created a common language of leadership, forged by the community itself. Over time, LEED evolved beyond a certification and became the very definition of a green building. Practitioners learned it, universities taught it, and an entire ecosystem emerged around it.
I witnessed this firsthand from within the U.S. Green Building Council.
Every mature market eventually develops a shared definition of leadership. It’s time for the sustainable products community to do this work.
From Ecolabels to Market Alignment
For decades, ecolabels have played an important role in highlighting products that meet higher environmental and health standards.
Green Seal became widely recognized in institutional cleaning and facility care markets because large purchasers incorporated Green Seal-certified products into procurement specifications. But as sustainability has expanded into mainstream consumer markets, shoppers now encounter dozens of environmental, health, social responsibility, animal welfare, and sustainability labels. This is not about creating yet another certification or sustainability label. It is about helping the marketplace develop a common definition of what constitutes a safer and more sustainable product.
From Certifier to Convener
Two years ago, Green Seal embarked on a new strategic plan based on a simple realization: no single organization can create the level of market alignment needed to address this challenge alone.
At the heart of that strategy was a belief shaped by my experience at the U.S. Green Building Council: The most powerful market transformation frameworks are not simply written for a market; they are built by the market.
That was one of the defining strengths of LEED. Architects, engineers, contractors, building owners, manufacturers, and facility managers saw themselves reflected in the framework because they helped create it. LEED became powerful not only because it certified buildings, but because the practitioner community treated it as its own.
That’s why, last year, we convened a Standards Steering Committee of 18 volunteer sustainability practitioners from leading brands, retailers, manufacturers, and technical organizations across the household and commercial marketplace to develop the criteria for a market-led definition of a sustainable product.
These professionals are responsible for making sustainability work inside complex organizations. They are developing products, managing supply chains, responding to retailer requirements, navigating regulations, and making procurement decisions every day.
What has been most encouraging is that the Steering Committee members increasingly speak about this work not as something Green Seal is doing for the market, but as something we are building together. That sense of shared ownership is essential. If a common definition of a green product is going to take root, it cannot be Green Seal’s definition alone. It must be a definition the practitioner community sees as credible, practical, and worth rallying around.
The Steering Committee already has developed the foundation of Green Seal’s v2.0 Standard by aligning on the core elements of a safer and more sustainable product:
- Safer Chemicals
- Responsible Sourcing
- Low-Impact Manufacturing
- Sustainable Packaging
- Verified Performance and Claims
Now the committee is drafting the criteria for each of these elements, with input from the subject matter experts on our newly appointed Technical and Policy Advisory Group.
Looking Ahead
At Green Seal, our vision is simple: To make it easier for consumers to buy green products.
A common definition does not eliminate the need for innovation, competition, or category-specific expertise. In fact, it can help accelerate all three. When the market has greater clarity about what leadership looks like, companies can focus more resources on developing better products and fewer resources on interpreting inconsistent expectations.
For Green Seal, this work is about more than updating a standard. It is about serving as a catalyst for the sustainable products community to build the shared foundation the marketplace has long been missing: a common definition of a green product that can help align the value chain, reduce confusion, and increase scale and impact.
Every mature market eventually develops a common definition of leadership. Green buildings have one. Energy-efficient products have one. Organic agriculture has one.
Sustainable everyday products do not.
Establishing this common definition may be one of the most important opportunities we have to accelerate the next generation of sustainable products.