The findings carry serious implications for stakeholders. When companies present exaggerated or incomplete sustainability claims, they compromise transparency and accountability, making it difficult for consumers, investors, and regulators to distinguish between genuinely responsible businesses and those using sustainability merely as a marketing tool. In this way, greenwashing does not just harm individual purchasing decisions; it undermines trust in sustainability reporting more broadly, limiting progress toward SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

Complementing this perspective, Lopes, Gomes, & Trancoso (2023) examine how greenwashing in marketing affects consumer engagement with circular economy practices. Their study demonstrates that when companies exaggerate their environmental achievements, “consumers tend to adopt a skeptical posture, reducing their willingness to purchase circular products” (Lopes et al., 2023, p. 8). This skepticism not only reduces support for recycling, reuse, and waste reduction but can spill over into other industries, weakening overall trust in sustainability claims.

Taken together, these two studies show that greenwashing is more than a communication problem. It creates systemic barriers to sustainable consumption by distorting market signals, reducing consumer confidence, and discouraging firms that invest in authentic sustainability. This makes greenwashing a direct obstacle to achieving SDG 12, which depends on reliable information and trust between producers and consumers.

Linked to Bentham and Mill, utilitarianism uses a "consequentialist framework" to pursue the "greatest good for the greatest number" (Shaw et al., 2020, p. 45). The short-term gains for shareholders or employees from greenwashing are outweighed by the harms: it deceives consumers, leading them to cause ecological damage, harms authentic sustainable companies and erodes confidence in actions against climate change, generating negative net profit.

Deontology

Kantian deontology focuses on "duty-based morality" rather than on outcomes (Shaw et al., 2020, p. 69). Their categorical imperative has two key rules: actions must be universal (greenwashing would collapse trust if it were to become widespread) and people must be treated as ends in themselves (not as tools for profit). Greenwashing violates both rules, exploiting consumers' ethical desires. Even when it generates some benefits, it is inherently unethical.