Tell Stories

Storytelling for Sustainability

When people within organisations communicate, they often do it through stories. Combining research with stories from practitioners working to embed sustainability within their organisations, our “Storytelling for Sustainability” guidebook was developed through the Embedding Project's Community of Practice process to help you:

• Understand what storytelling looks like in practice, and reflect on this in the context of your organisation

• Develop a sense of why stories are important for embedding sustainability

• Learn from other practitioners’ experiences with storytelling to better plan your own efforts

Shaping Your Organisation’s Narrative Infrastructure

Stories matter, they have an enormous influence on decision-making in organisations.

How often do you stop to reflect on the collection of stories that get told in your organisation and whether you might need to shift them to better embed sustainability?

This guide builds on our work on Storytelling for Sustainability and is based on four years of research and over 100 interviews in twenty different global companies exploring the impact of organisational narratives and how change agents helped to shift them to better support strategic decision-making aligned with sustainability. As with all of our resources, the ideas and guidance presented here have been piloted with several of our partner companies and we welcome your feedback to keep improving them.

The FrameWorks Institute

The FrameWorks Institute uses social science methods to develop techniques that can help you to explain sustainability-related topics more effectively, including racial and economic justice, climate change, and health equity. They provide articles and reports on these topics, as well as toolkits, which include practical framing strategies that communication specialists can immediately put to work. These toolkits offer a nuanced assessment of the issue and clear recommendations on first & next steps.

The Greenwashing Hydra

This report from Planet Tracker can help you understand and identify the nuances of greenwashing. It explains the problem of greenwashing, identifies six different types of greenwashing, and provides an overview of the global regulatory crackdown on greenwashing. The report may be of particular value to sales, marketing, and procurement professionals.

Advertising Guidance - misleading environmental claims and social responsibility

This guide by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) is designed to help organisations comply with sustainability-related advertising regulations. It covers a wide range of environmental and social claims while providing practical examples. Marketing and communications teams who want to advertise responsibly will find it most useful.

Although this resource was created specifically for businesses within England, it provides helpful insights for any organisation that wants to ensure it does not mislead customers.

Sustainability Communications and Disclosure Handbook 2024

This handbook from edie can help your company improve its sustainability-related communications by avoiding common greenwashing pitfalls. It offers guidance on navigating the challenge of effectively communicating sustainability nuances and explains how to engage different audiences, including consumers, colleagues, investors, your board, and suppliers. It also summarises both the UN’s recommendations on greenwashing and key disclosure frameworks. The guide is intended to support sustainability professionals working with internal communications teams or external PR firms.

Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from 'issue' to 'action'

This article explores the misconception that climate change dread is a necessary precursor for action and behavioural change. It can help you to take action-oriented approach to storytelling that supports people's agency and leverages their stories as a positive narrative structure.

How to Measure Narrative Change

This article can help you to better understand how to measure narrative change and to know when storytelling is having a positive impact on your sustainability efforts. It presents an adaptive framework that breaks down quantifiable and qualitative indicators of change into four interconnected, measurable categories: message and messenger, reach (activities), people (outcomes), and culture and structures (impact). This resource will be particularly beneficial to communications, marketing, and sustainability professionals.

Selling Sustainability: Primer for Marketers

Consider passing this primer to your marketing department. It offers insight into how they can be more strategic when communicating the functional, emotional, and social sustainability-related values of your products. The primer was published by the Futerra and BSR Sustainable Lifestyle Frontiers Group, a collaboration between Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Waste Management, Carlsberg, Walmart, L'oreal, McDonald's, eBay, and Disney.

Stories for Life

This website, created by the Green Economy Coalition, the Wellbeing Economy, and The SpaceShip Earth, can help you understand and talk about the flaws in our economic system that are driving the sustainability crisis. It consists of eight webpages, each one its own chapter, and explains how inaccurate stories are holding our outdated economic systems in place. They argue that re-designing the economy begins with updating the stories and deeper narratives that shape it. These insights will be most useful to communications, sustainability, and finance professionals.

Decolonisation in Imagery and Language: Guidance and Resource List

Imagery and language play a significant role in shaping how the stories we tell interact with the perceptions of others. This short resource offers general guidance and a resource list for remaining mindful when using images, stories, and narratives of peoples faced with historical and continued colonial oppression and its legacies in your work.