Re: Sustainability written with 7 Ps.
Fiona van Iersel
MSc Marketing — King's College London
Module: Marketing Sustainability and Ethics (7QQMO509X)
Date: 14 January 2026
https://keats.kcl.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=802247

Re: Sustainability written with 7 Ps.
Submitted: 14 January 2026 5:11 PM

Kudos Theo. Respect. Guilty as charged, I was one of the people who said that sometimes, even if I want to be sustainable, I am not. Not because I do not care, I very much do care, but because in that moment I just cannot. And I realised I had to get off my high horse a bit. Not everyone can afford organic food. Not everyone can afford fair trade. A lot of people are just trying to survive right now. We mean well, but times are tough, and that matters.

I am literally driving right now to pick up my kid in my electric car and thinking, okay… where is this battery going to end up. Where is my electricity actually coming from. And also, this is a new car. Would I have had less impact keeping an older one on the road instead of producing a brand new “green” one. That is where the whole greenwashing thing starts to feel really uncomfortable.

I think the permission point you are making is huge. Sustainability often works as permission giving. Permission to keep consuming while feeling like we are doing the right thing. And I do not even think that comes from a bad place. I genuinely believe humans want to do the right thing. The problem is, we cannot always afford the right thing. If Uber priced rides to reflect the true cost of emissions, electricity generation, battery production, and end-of-life disposal, I honestly do not know how many people would still be taking Ubers. It would be way more expensive. Possibly not even a viable business.

And this is where I think your point really lands. Marketing’s job is to make a business viable. Sustainable or not, a company still has to work financially. So the tension is real. If we priced everything at its true environmental cost, a lot of services would suddenly become inaccessible to the very people who rely on them most.

That is also why the greenwashing witch hunt makes me nervous. If every attempt at sustainability gets torn apart, companies may just stop trying because it becomes too risky and too volatile. The Tom Shoes story always sticks with me. I really believe they meant well. They tried. And later they were absolutely slaughtered for impacts they did not even realise they were creating. If the rules keep changing and the punishment is public shaming, who is going to want to even touch sustainability.

I also think this is where we have to be honest about scale. Individual households matter, yes. But corporate decisions matter way more. Corporations shape supply chains, pricing, defaults, and availability. They can move the needle in ways individual consumers simply cannot. So putting all the responsibility on individuals feels unfair, especially when many people are already stretched.

So yes, I agree with you. Sustainability is messy. It is full of trade-offs. And marketing sits right in the middle of it trying to make heavy, complex issues feel light and accessible. I do not have a clean answer either. But I think your post does a really good job of showing why this is not about good versus bad people. It is about systems, affordability, and where real impact actually comes from.



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