Tips for Sharing Your Sustainability Story
November 6, 2026
Many businesses have a sustainability story worth sharing. But when you’re focused on running a business, finding the time—and the words—to explain what you’re doing, why it matters, and what you’re learning along the way can be a challenge.
Where do you start? What’s worth highlighting? How do you tell a story that sounds like your business and connects with the people you want to reach?
Local sustainability communications and marketing firm Right On has shared a writing checklist full of tips to help. Building on the ideas in an earlier post, Your Sustainability Story Matters: Three Communication Lessons for Local Businesses, these tips offer a starting point for your Green Business profile, website, social media, and other communications.
Key Tips
As you sit down to write your sustainability story, keep these tips in mind.
Start with your audience. Think about who you want to reach, what they care about, and how your sustainability efforts connect with their priorities.
Tell a story, not just a list of actions. Give your audience a beginning, middle, and end—and a reason why. What prompted a change, what did you do, and what happened?
Use everyday language. Leave out buzzwords and technical terms that might be unfamiliar to the people you want to reach. Explain your work the way you would in a conversation, focusing on priorities people with different perspectives can share.
Keep it positive and practical. Focus on realistic solutions and progress rather than overwhelming folks with the scale of environmental problems.
Bring it close to home. Connect your efforts to local places, experiences, and concerns that feel familiar to your audience.
Give numbers context. Use clear comparisons to help people understand what a figure means and why it matters.
Be specific. Describe what you’re doing today rather than relying on broad claims or distant goals.
Put people in the story. Highlight the employees, customers, neighbors, and partners involved in or benefiting from your efforts.
Sound like yourself. Bring your business’s voice and personality into your sustainability communications.
Be honest about your progress. Share what you’ve accomplished, what you’re learning, and where you still have work to do.
From Tips to Practice
These tips are also the starting point for a free coaching pilot we’re offering to six certified Green Businesses in partnership with Right On this fall. Participants are receiving free one-on-one support to refine their Green Business profiles and explore ways to share their sustainability stories with customers, the community, and others in their industry.
More to share once the pilot wraps up at the end of the year, including what we’ve learned along the way!
Thank you to Right On for sharing its expertise and helping local businesses tell the stories behind their sustainability efforts.
