Sustainwashing

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The sustainability analogue of greenwashing (or subset thereof, in ecologic subsenses). uncountable

    "wondering whether the advertisement's talk of sustainability might be a bit of sustainwashing"

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of sustainwash form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"wondering whether the advertisement's talk of sustainability might be a bit of sustainwashing"

Etymology

From sustain + -wash + -ing, following the established pattern of greenwashing, pinkwashing, purplewashing, and similar forms (which came ultimately from the figurative-extension sense of whitewashing as "slapping a paintjob over the truth to hide it and to give a specious nice appearance").

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.