Key findings
- 53% of organisations that reduced public communication on climate still fund it above 5% of CapEx.
- 34% of organisations that weakened their targets do.
- 11% of all organisations are Under claimers: real capability and no formal target. 72% of them fund climate work.
- 11% of sustainability leaders name political and external pressure as their biggest internal obstacle.
What is greenhushing?
Greenhushing is when an organisation deliberately says less in public about its climate work than it is doing. It is the opposite of greenwashing, where the claim is bigger than the action.
Are companies that go quiet doing less?
Not on this evidence. Among organisations that have reduced their public communication on climate, 53% still direct more than 5% of capital expenditure to climate-aligned investment. Among those that have weakened their targets, the figure is 34%.
Going quiet and backing away are different things. One is a communications decision. The other is a funding decision.
Going quiet is not the same as backing away
Share funding climate above 5% of CapEx
View data
| Answer | % |
|---|---|
| Organisations that reduced public communication | 53% |
| Organisations that weakened their target | 34% |
Why would a company do the work and not talk about it?
Risk. One Head of Sustainability in retail told us:
“It has become politically sensitive with parts of our customer base, so we have deliberately lowered the volume.”
When we asked for the single biggest internal obstacle to meeting climate commitments, 11% of those who answered described political and external pressure.
How many companies are doing the work without a target?
About one in nine. In our segmentation of the market, 11% of organisations are Under claimers. They have no formal net zero target and have announced nothing, yet 72% fund climate work.
Compare that with Declarers, the 28% who hold a target. Only 21% of them fund it.
The group with no target is three times more likely to be funding the work
Share funding climate work, by segment
View data
| Answer | % |
|---|---|
| Under claimers (no formal target) | 72% |
| Declarers (formal target) | 21% |
What this means
Silence is being misread. A company that has stopped posting about net zero may have stopped working on it, or may have decided the work is safer unannounced. From the outside you cannot tell which.
That has consequences for three groups.
- Comms teams. Lowering the volume protects against one risk and creates another: customers, staff and investors who care will assume the worst. Decide who still needs to hear it, and tell them directly.
- Buyers and investors. Absence of a statement is not evidence. Ask.
- Journalists and analysts. Counting announcements now undercounts action.
The four types of company make the same point from another angle. What is said and what is built have come apart.
Frequently asked questions
What is greenhushing?
Greenhushing is when a company deliberately says less in public about its climate work than it is doing.
Are companies that go quiet on climate abandoning it?
Not necessarily. In The Reality Department's research, 53% of organisations that reduced public communication on climate still fund it above 5% of CapEx, against 34% of those that weakened their targets.
How many companies are acting on climate without a net zero target?
11% of organisations have real climate capability and no formal target. 72% of them fund climate work.
Methodology
The Reality Department surveyed 500 sustainability decision-makers: 250 in the United States and 250 in the United Kingdom. Fieldwork: August 2026.
Related: How many companies are funding their net zero targets?
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