Greenhushing: Climate silence doesn’t mean inaction

Between the rise of MAHA Moms and “clean-eating” wellness influencers, there has been a shift in the way Americans are talking about food. Matters of personal health have dominated food conversations in recent years, with consumers encouraged to analyze every mouthful of a meal for harmful additives, or to consume more allegedly healthful ingredients, like beef tallow to replace supposedly toxic seed oils and turmeric to curb inflammation. But there was a time, in the not-so-long-ago mid-2010s, when the food sector was laser-focused on addressing a very different concern at the forefront of Americans’ consciousness: the need to meet the challenges of the climate crisis. From fast food restaurants to food ingredient manufacturers, companies started making hefty sustainability commitments to the public. Cargill promised to transition their farmers to regenerative ag practices; Nestlé promised to reduce deforestation in their supply chains; Chipotle promised to conserve water; Sodexo and Just Salad promised to lower their carbon emissions.

“Global warming was definitely a really big factor in people starting to learn more about environmental impacts,” said Isaac Emery, project director at environmental consulting firm WSP, referring to the mood in the early 2000s. “They start thinking about where they see that in their lives, whether it’s their cars or their power bills or their food purchases, and so that starts to drive a lot of attention from people to companies.” 

However, in the summer of 2025, Food Navigator reported that many consumer packaged goods companies had begun rolling back on their sustainability promises; and this July, Inside Climate News delivered word that one of the world’s largest meatpacking companies, JBS, was abandoning its commitment to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Lots of other food companies seem to have gone mum about their pledges to minimize their land use and water and carbon footprints. Instead, many corporate websites are now replete with buzzy words favored by the Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, like protein and “real food,” with little or no mention of sustainability. Has the food sector abandoned its sustainability commitments wholescale? The news, we found, might be better than the silence indicates.

What is greenhushing?

Industry insiders say that in a lot of instances, the environmental sustainability work that so many companies took on around 2015 continues apace. We’re existing in a political atmosphere, though, that is anti-science and anti-environment, with government websites scrubbed of climate data. Many organizations fear federal backlash if they’re honest about their climate goals, so they’re engaging in what’s known as “greenhushing.” That is, they’re continuing the work but not talking about it. As New York University’s Center for Sustainable Business points out on its website, working toward ambitious climate goals helps companies manage risk and operate more efficiently, which can lead to greater profitability. And such goals square with the desires of the majority of Americans who, as Grist recently reported, are still interested in addressing climate change.

Still, said Emery, there’s plenty of variability in what food businesses are up to. “We have seen companies that had planned changes back off or retract a little bit. We’ve worked with companies that simply rebranded their changes or are reframing how they’re talking about them internally or to the public, but are still fundamentally doing the same good work. And some [companies] that you wouldn’t necessarily expect are really driven to make positive change and are really excited about the work that they do.”

The reason, several experts told FoodPrint, is that sustainability makes good financial sense for the future of these companies. Agriculture, which props up every food business in one way or another, is distinctly vulnerable to the ravages of climate change: the droughts, the wildfires, the loss of arable land to sea-level rise, the flooding and temperatures soaring beyond the threshold of what plants can bear — plus all the diseases and insect pests these disasters bring with them (to wit, the current lettuce-linked cyclospora outbreak that’s sickened more than 30,000 people in the U.S., according to food-safety lawyer Bill Marler’s accounting). The only way to be resilient as a food business is to make sure the acreage it’s all predicated on can continue to be farmed. 

A decade ago, as the United Nations was releasing its sustainable development goals, companies began to make promises around greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They categorized these as Scope 1, 2 or 3 emissions, classifications determined by the direct and indirect ways in which various parts of a supply chain contribute to emissions. Farms and agricultural companies may produce direct Scope 1 emissions from the fuel used to run tractors and the methane burps emanating from cows; Scope 2 emissions, from the electricity purchased to run cold-storage rooms and warehouses; and indirect Scope 3, from things like the manufacture and use of fertilizer, the release of carbon from tilling the ground, and driving food around in trucks and processing it off-site. Humane World for Animals (HWA), which releases an annual, third party–certified protein sustainability scorecard, concentrates on getting food companies like Sodexo, which runs college, corporate and hospital dining services, to increase plant-based proteins in their menus and source meats from regenerative suppliers; companies that track Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions can use the scorecard to measure their progress. HWA has done the same with New York City public schools, which now have menus that are about 40 percent plant-based, adding up to a 42-percent reduction in overall carbon emissions per student, according to HWA’s vice president for farm animal protection in the U.S., Karla Dumas.

WSP, on the other hand, focuses on lifecycle assessments (LCAs) for the companies it advises. “We get to do not just carbon, but we can do water impacts, we can do human health impacts, we can look at particulate air pollution, we can look at the pollution of waterways with fertilizers,” Emery said by way of explanation of an LCA’s broader implications. “There’s literally dozens of different environmental impacts that you can assess.” 

All of these come with costs that affect a food company’s bottom line — if not now, then in the future. And of course, for publicly traded companies, that all has implications that are of great interest to shareholders.

Climate resilience equals business resilience

With heat waves pummeling much of the world in the summer of 2026, industry insiders say that food companies are absolutely thinking about environmental impacts — they’ve lost money from having to crank up their air conditioning, from employees calling in sick due to heat-related illness, from elevated food prices that result from the high cost of fertilizer and the loss of farmer crops to extreme weather. Whether or not companies want to step into the fray by defending climate-smart practices, sustainability measures implemented throughout a supply chain can and do lower costs. “I never want a [climate] disaster to happen,” said Emery, “but when it does, it can remind people that climate change is real. It can remind people that these risks and costs that they’ve been warned about can actually happen.”

What actually works to mitigate those risks? “Cover cropping or low-till or no-till, there’s all these practices that are good for the environment that lower carbon and/or have other benefits for soil health, biodiversity, water quality, water withdrawals, that also let farmers save money,” Emery said. “Being more efficient with food production means that either you have to buy less in the first place or you can make more food with what you have, and those reduce waste, reduce emissions and reduce costs.”

Companies differ in the scope of their efforts and how — and why — they share that information with the public. In some cases, they are doing the work but with minimal fanfare; their climate commitments might be on their website, for example, but require some digging to find. In other cases, they might be doing relatively little but trumpeting their “wins” in shareholder reports, in some instances greenwashing their actions because they know what will resonate with investors.

Chipotle, which was founded with a planet-friendly mission as its backbone, still highlights its commitment to reducing its GHG emissions by 50 percent by 2030 (albeit, toward the bottom of its website’s “values” vertical). Its sustainability reports show a 17-percent reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions in 2025, up slightly from 15 percent in 2024; a climb to 81 percent renewable energy in its restaurants; and an upgrade in 350 of its restaurants to high-efficiency equipment packages (HEEP) — basically, low-carbon electric grills.

And then there’s McDonald’s. You won’t find the chain loudly advertising its sustainability efforts, but in its most recent Purpose and Impact Progress Report, meant to be read by shareholders, the company touts its commitment to a “thriving planet.” It reports that almost 91 percent of its primary packaging now comes from recycled, renewable or certified sources; it’s delivering food in electric vehicles to customers in Australia; and in Canada, it’s working with conservation nonprofit Ducks Unlimited to restore 125,000 acres of cropland to wildlife-friendly grassland. These kinds of statements look good on paper, but how genuinely impactful they are when all the company’s behaviors are added up is hard to say, especially considering that it slaughters an estimated 1.25 million cows a year for its burgers.

In these reports, companies also show where they’re struggling to meet their commitments — a testament to the complexity of the food system, the actual timespan required to meet these goals and a tacit admission that they’re still trying. As industry insiders have pointed out, investors are unlikely to sign on if a company is in danger of having its inventory flooded in the next growing season, and there are already parts of the country where insurance companies will not cover damage from wildfire. These reports, incomplete on achievements as they may be, still provide meaningful information that’s not necessarily evident when a customer is ordering off a menu or walking a supermarket’s aisles. That information can be found with a small amount of effort and it often presents an optimistic picture of what’s happening in corporate America.

“There’s still a tremendous amount of work being done,” said Emery, “and the corporate sustainability world is actually resilient to changes in federal policy.”

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