Over the past decade, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with hundreds of brands as they navigate sustainability, helping them integrate initiatives in ways that meaningfully drive growth.

At rePurpose Global, our focus has always been clear: help companies participate profitably in the transition to a circular economy. That means moving beyond intent, and building systems where sustainability decisions are tied to business outcomes.

What’s been interesting to watch is how quickly this conversation has evolved.

A few years ago, sustainability still largely sat on the margins - owned by a small team, often disconnected from core business strategy. Today, driven in part by regulatory shifts like Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), it’s becoming much harder to treat it as optional.

Which is why it was particularly interesting for me to attend eTail West in Palm Springs last week, a conference primarily catering to retail and marketing teams.

Because if there’s one function that has already figured out how to connect experimentation, measurement, and growth at scale, it’s marketing.

And there’s a lot sustainability teams can learn from them.

Setting the context: sustainability as a growth lever

At the conference, I joined as a speaker on the panel titled “Green is Gold—Unlocking Profitable Growth Through Sustainable eCommerce,” moderated by Edilsa Bueno.

I had the chance to speak alongside:

• April Lane, Chief Merchandising Officer at Thrive Market
• Jeff Yurcisin, CEO of Grove Collaborative
• David Luba, Co-Founder of Veritree

Both Thrive Market and Grove Collaborative have also been long-term partners of rePurpose Global - supporting plastic recovery efforts across coastlines globally and demonstrating what it looks like to operationalize sustainability at scale.

The conversation centered on a question that feels increasingly relevant:

Sustainability is no longer a “nice-to-have.” But how do you actually make it real—in a way that drives growth, strengthens customer relationships, and holds up operationally?

Across both the panel and the broader conference, one thing became clear.

The challenge isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s a lack of rigor and freedom in how those ideas are executed.

Sustainability requires iteration, not one-off experimentation

One of the clearest lessons from the conference was that good marketing teams do not expect every effort to work on the first try.

That is true across channels. If a TikTok campaign underperforms, the response is rarely to conclude that TikTok “doesn’t work” as a channel. Teams go back and ask harder questions. Was the creative wrong? Was the audience targeting off? Was the message unclear? Did the timing miss the moment? They test, refine, and try again.

Sustainability should be approached with the same discipline.

There is already a significant body of evidence showing that both consumers and retailers increasingly care about sustainability. The issue is not whether it matters. The issue is that many companies still treat sustainability as a one-time experiment. They try one campaign, one initiative, or one product decision, and if it does not immediately translate into a clear result, they move on and decide it is not right for their brand.

But that is not how meaningful strategies are built.

Just like marketing, sustainability takes experimentation. It takes A/B testing, iteration, and a willingness to learn from what did not land the first time. Different brands will need different expressions of sustainability depending on their customer, category, price point, and identity. The goal is not to copy a formula. The goal is to stay with the process long enough to find what is authentic and effective for your business.

Over time, the brands that keep learning are the ones that find their own version of the strategy - one that fits naturally into their brand, resonates with consumers, and becomes part of the relationship customers build with them.

Build with the customer, not just for them

Another lesson that came through clearly is that the strongest brands do not treat the customer as a final checkpoint. They treat the customer as an input from the beginning.

In marketing, that is second nature. Teams know that an idea that looks compelling internally can still fall flat in the market. So rather than waiting until launch to find out, they build feedback loops early. They test concepts, messages, and experiences before fully committing to them.

Sustainability efforts should work the same way.

Too often, companies develop sustainability strategies in isolation. They spend months refining the initiative internally, only to reveal it to the customer at the very end and hope it resonates. But if sustainability is meant to strengthen brand loyalty and influence buying behavior, it cannot be designed entirely behind closed doors.

Customers should help shape what sustainability looks like for a brand. They can signal which issues matter most to them, what feels credible, what feels performative, and what actually changes their perception of the company. That does not mean customers should dictate every decision. But it does mean brands need to be much more deliberate about building sustainability in dialogue with the market rather than simply presenting it to the market.

The companies that do this well are not just better at communicating impact. They are better at designing sustainability strategies that people actually care about.

Sustainability works best when it reflects a brand’s core values authentically

The final point is that sustainability is most powerful when it is not treated as a trend, a campaign, or a bolt-on narrative.

Brands will always be tempted to respond to what is current. That is part of how markets work. But customers are increasingly able to tell the difference between a company that is using sustainability because it is timely and one that is using sustainability because it genuinely reflects what the brand stands for.

That difference matters.

When sustainability is rooted in a company’s values, it has much more staying power. It shapes decisions across the business, not just in marketing. It influences product design, partnerships, operations, and the way trade-offs are made. Most importantly, it gives customers something more durable to connect with than a single campaign message.

And that is ultimately what builds trust. Not the loudest claim or the most polished campaign, but the consistency between what a brand says, what it does, and what it continues to prioritize over time.

At rePurpose Global, this is a big part of how we help brands show up more consistently. We work with companies to build long-term participation in plastic recovery efforts rather than one-off sustainability moments. That gives brands a way to demonstrate measurable, transparent progress over time, while also creating touchpoints that help consumers engage more deeply with the work. Tools like our product detail page (PDP) widgets, for instance, allow customers to go beyond the headline claim and better understand the process, the impact, and what the brand is actually supporting.

The brands that will benefit most from sustainability are not the ones trying to capitalize on it as a moment. They are the ones embedding it deeply enough that it becomes inseparable from how customers understand them. You can read more about our Plastic Recovery Claims for Consumer Brands here. 

Final reflection

What stood out to me at eTail West was not that marketing and sustainability are becoming similar in language. It is that they now need to become similar in discipline.

For years, sustainability was allowed to sit somewhat outside the core machinery of the business. It could be aspirational, loosely defined, and evaluated on a different timeline. That is no longer the case. As regulatory pressure increases and stakeholder expectations become more concrete, sustainability is being drawn into the same commercial reality as every other strategic priority.

That is a good thing.

It forces a more serious conversation about what it takes to make sustainability work: clearer measurement, stronger customer alignment, more operational consistency, and a willingness to iterate until the strategy becomes both credible and commercially durable.

The companies that do this well will not be the ones with the most ambitious language. They will be the ones that build sustainability into the way the business learns, adapts, and creates value over time.