Why Sustainability Is the Most Confusing Word in Food

Sustainability. What a word. Those six awkwardly poised syllables get thrown around everywhere — in government statements, corporate reports and as a shorthand for anyone wanting to signal environmental awareness. Making potato peel crisps or porridge patties? Congratulations, you’re practicing sustainability, apparently.

In truth, sustainability isn’t glamorous. You can’t go on a date night with it or curl up on the sofa for a relaxing Sunday and cuddle up to sustainability. It’s not a hobby or a team sport you can book for Tuesday evenings. Sustainability is more like a butterfly: it touches everything we see, but the more you try to grasp it, the more it slips away and frustrates you.

That slipperiness is part of what makes sustainability so anxiety-inducing. To answer a simple question like “Are we living sustainably?” we first need a clear definition. But the concept is slippery; definitions vary, and certainty is hard to come by.

We might need a detective to sort this out. Forget Kojak or Sherlock — too many distractions — but imagine Sarah Lund from The Killing, in a sensible wool sweater, digging through the evidence. Of course, before we can judge her sweater, we need to know what “sustainable wool” actually means.

“Hej,” says Sarah, presumably researching her sweater’s origin before anything else. While she looks into it, we wait for her findings — ideally informed, practical and free of greenwashing.

Part of the reason sustainability feels overwhelming is that it covers almost everything. Once you start examining what “sustainable” means, it touches every part of daily life. That breadth makes a clear, manageable definition difficult to pin down.

From the moment you wake up: are your sheets and pajamas made from sustainable materials? Are your curtains? Is the energy keeping your home warm derived from renewable sources? You pick up your phone and laugh at the idea that a device built through complex global supply chains could be truly sustainable. The point is clear: sustainability permeates routine choices.

Because the term is so broad and vague, it risks becoming meaningless. Saying something is “sustainable” without specifics is as unhelpful as calling a paint colour simply “colour.” Ask a roomful of people to define sustainability and you’ll get blank stares. Meanwhile, businesses can easily claim sustainability credentials and sound convincing without being precise.

Take my own “daily, sustainable writing practice.” The claim sounds neat until you recognise how shaky it is: writing every day without creative blocks isn’t an inherently sustainable practice. Even if someone managed that consistently, we’d still need to consider whether the tools and energy used are environmentally responsible before calling it sustainable.

At its core, sustainability is simply the idea that our actions can continue into the future without causing harm. Framed negatively, it asks: is what we’re doing damaging anything? Answering that is complex and depends on which impacts we prioritise, over what timescale, and whose perspectives we consider.

For now, Sarah Lund is elbow-deep in research — books, papers and reports — still trying to determine whether her sweater, and many other everyday choices, meet a genuine standard of sustainability. If funding is secured, she hopes to publish a thorough report, but these investigations take time.

Only after that deeper analysis can meaningful decisions and actions begin.