Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Contributors: Odette Bester, Lee Fitzpatrick, Zac Schaap
In the regenerative business space, there’s an unspoken pressure to get everything right from the beginning. Yet perfection isn’t just unrealistic, it’s contrary to regenerative principles.
As the Founder and Regenerative Growth Director at Zebra Growth, I’ll start with a confession: we’ve greenwashed too. I want to share what we’ve learned through our own messy journey, not lecture from a place of moral superiority.
Because even purpose-driven organisations with the best intentions fall into the trap of greenwashing. Greenwashing is a continuous learning process that every organisation in the impact space must navigate thoughtfully.
Modern greenwashing goes far beyond false environmental claims. I experienced this while working for a venture studio whose mission statement focused on “creating impact in the world.” This language attracted me to the position, but I quickly realised that internally, “impact” simply meant financial returns. When leadership discussed increasing impact, they were really talking about generating more profit.
“But isn’t that what most businesses do?” Perhaps. The difference is in the disguise, portraying extractive practices as regenerative ones. Even when profit isn’t the primary motivation, greenwashing occurs when organisations (including many NGOs) carry colonial patterns in their work, believing they know what’s best for communities without truly listening or co-creating with them.1
The white saviour complex, not referring to skin colour but to a mindset and culture, is often what leads organisations to assume they know what’s best for communities they aim to serve. I’ve recognised this pattern in myself, having been educated in business schools influenced by Western extractive thinking.2 This colonial mindset has deeply permeated how business is conceptualised and practiced globally, including across Africa where post-colonial capitalism often manifests as what scholars describe as ‘squanderation’, political economies driven by elite self-enrichment rather than development. I encourage readers to explore the article Dysfunctional Capitalism in Africa and the Theory of Squanderation to better understand how these extractive patterns continue to shape economic systems worldwide.
What I’ve come to understand is this: perfectionism is the opposite of regeneration. Regeneration acknowledges that life is messy, complex, and constantly evolving. It recognises that some things must die for new growth to emerge, including our outdated approaches and mindsets.
Practical Steps for Regenerative Marketing Without Greenwashing
The faster we accept that avoiding greenwashing isn’t as simple as having good intentions, the less prone we become to falling into its trap. The relationship between growth and authenticity is a dance, one that requires embracing imperfection while striving for continuous improvement.
So how do we dance with this complexity without stumbling into greenwashing?
It starts with recognising that marketing isn’t a siloed department, it’s an extension of your entire organisation. When your marketing team operates in isolation, disconnected from finance, operations, governance, or product development, you create perfect conditions for unintentional greenwashing.
In impact organisations, especially scaling ones, I’ve observed how easily these silos develop, not because people don’t care, but because organisational structures don’t facilitate cross-departmental sharing. This challenge is particularly acute in growing purpose-driven businesses where teams are expanding and specialising rapidly. Creating pathways for information to flow freely between departments isn’t just good organisational practice, it’s essential for authentic communications.
Open conversations within your team are essential. Every business is at risk of greenwashing, including yours. Make discussing this possibility a regular ritual, at least monthly, where you examine recent decisions and communications through a critical lens. These conversations aren’t about blame or shame but opportunities to collectively identify extractive patterns you might be unconsciously perpetuating.
Adding a decolonial lens to these discussions is equally vital. Tania from Tandem Innovation Group (one of our speakers at the Regenerative Marketing Playground on decolonial marketing and a current client) has shared a valuable resource her team reviews almost weekly. It explores characteristics of white supremacy culture that permeate organisations, including perfectionism, sense of urgency, worship of the written word, binary thinking, and power hoarding. As the resource notes, these traits are often “taught as essential to success” when in reality they perpetuate harmful systems. You can find this resource here. Examining both greenwashing tendencies and colonial patterns in your regular team discussions helps make this critical awareness a cornerstone of your organisational culture rather than an occasional afterthought.
“What about when these conversations get uncomfortable?” That’s exactly the point. Regeneration is an uncomfortable process, you are changing, it’s going to be challenging.3 Many purpose-driven leaders (myself included) experience fear, anxiety, and guilt around accidentally greenwashing. I’ve recognised that this guilt actually makes the problem worse, keeping us trapped in extractive thinking.
The best protection against greenwashing is diverse input, particularly from those affected by your work. Go beyond your investors and board to engage local communities and stakeholders with various lived experiences. Seek out voices that can be honestly critical without bias or personal gain. These perspectives will help you see blind spots in your thinking.
The language we use also matters tremendously in avoiding greenwashing. Buzzwords can become particularly problematic as they often mean different things to different people. Terms like “impact,” “sustainable,” or “regenerative” can be interpreted in vastly different ways depending on the context and the audience. This ambiguity creates perfect conditions for unintentional greenwashing. Be specific about what these terms mean within your organisation and be ready to unpack them rather than relying on their positive associations.
Let me share a concerning example I’ve observed: the recent commodification of natural resources through biodiversity credits. While the intention may seem positive, creating assets that protect nature, these mechanisms often carry forward colonial patterns of extraction. As George Monbiot warns, “Something that should be a great force for good has turned into a corporate gold rush,” with “big corporations and financiers pile[ing] into this market.” When consulting firms and investment giants like BlackRock become major investors in biodiversity credits, we should question the approach. These credits often create what Monbiot aptly calls “carbon colonialism” with local communities, sometimes transferring land ownership to banks and investment firms if certain conditions aren’t met. Indigenous people, in many cases, have “not given their consent” yet find their lands incorporated into these schemes. What looks sustainable on the surface can become another form of colonisation if we don’t examine the relationships and power dynamics involved.4
One of the most powerful antidotes to greenwashing is radical transparency about your challenges and failures. When you only communicate your successes, you create an incomplete and potentially misleading picture. Consider how you might balance celebrating achievements with honest acknowledgment of areas where you’re struggling or still learning.
“But won’t admitting our flaws damage our brand?” Actually, the opposite is true. This approach builds deeper trust with your audience and models the kind of authenticity that regenerative business requires. Look at Dr. Bronner’s “All-One Report” which doesn’t shy away from areas where they’re still working to improve, creating an authentic picture of their journey toward regenerative business practices.
Conventional marketing is often one-directional, you craft a message and deliver it to your audience. Regenerative marketing invites conversation, creating space for questions, challenges, and evolved thinking. This might mean being willing to change your position after receiving new information, even if you’ve already published a campaign. While this adaptability might seem challenging from a conventional marketing perspective, it demonstrates an authentic commitment to learning.
Feedback from our community has also highlighted how oversimplification of messages often leads to greenwashing. Most issues in the regenerative space, climate crisis, social change, colonialism, are more complex than we might like to admit. While we often need to start with simplified messaging, particularly in short-form content like social media, we must acknowledge this limitation. Consider explicitly mentioning that you’re providing a simplified view and offering pathways to deeper engagement. Being scared of overwhelming people with complexity often leads to unintentional greenwashing.
We’ve experienced this ourselves when Ghalia Naseer, a co-steward of the regenerative marketing movement, recently called us out for oversimplifying regenerative marketing as one clear-cut concept without acknowledging its nuances. We’re thankful for her valuable intervention. This kind of accountability from our ecosystem helps us grow and reminds us that even with the best intentions, we can all slip into greenwashing if we don’t honour the full complexity of these issues.
“How do we balance complexity with accessibility?” Consider being explicit about the limitations of simplified content, especially on social media. You might include phrases like “This is a simplified overview” and direct people to more detailed resources. Create pathways for those who want to engage more deeply with nuanced topics.
Addressing greenwashing isn’t just about external communications, it requires internal work as well. Develop practices that help you manage the discomfort that arises when confronting potentially extractive patterns in your work. This might include therapy, breathwork, or other practices that build self-awareness and emotional resilience. By tending to our own personal growth, we become better equipped to hold space for honest conversations and respond non-defensively to critical feedback.
The Inner Development Goals framework also offers valuable guidance for leaders seeking to cultivate the inner capacities needed for regenerative leadership. These goals help us develop the emotional resilience and self-awareness required to hold uncomfortable conversations and manage the challenging feelings that arise when confronting our own extractive patterns. This inner work isn’t separate from our organisational efforts, it’s foundational to them. As leaders, we must be willing to face our discomfort, sit with uncertainty, and develop the capacity to respond rather than react when receiving difficult feedback.
Avoiding greenwashing while growing a regenerative business is a practice. And like any practice, it gets easier and less uncomfortable with time and repetition.
Remember that this is truly about baby steps. Each small improvement matters. The more you practise having these conversations, examining your communications critically, and inviting diverse feedback, the less uncomfortable it becomes. Over time, what once felt challenging becomes a natural part of how you operate.
The future of marketing, indeed, the future of business, depends on our willingness to embrace both the messiness and the possibility of regeneration. By rejecting perfectionism and cultivating honest relationships with ourselves, our teams, and our communities, we can transform marketing from an extractive practice into a catalyst for healing and renewal.
And isn’t that what regenerative business is truly about?
- Want to dive deeper into how colonial mindsets show ups up in your work? Check out this piece on perfectionism as a colonial trait, this academic discussion on colonialism in environmentalism, and this podcast episode ‘perfectionism is colonialism in action’. ↩︎
- Curious about what the white saviour complex really means? Here’s a quick definition. For a real-world example, check out this Guardian piece on an HBO documentary exploring this issue. And for a throwback, here’s an old but insightful take on the KONY2012 phenomenon ↩︎
- Regeneration isn’t easy—it’s meant to challenge us. If you want to understand the ecological concept behind it, here’s a Wikipedia primer. ↩︎
- Biodiversity credits might sound good, but are they another form of colonialism? This article from The Conversation unpacks the risks of nature markets. For an even sharper critique, which we quoted, check out George Monbiot’s take on carbon colonialism. ↩︎