The differences between environmentally friendly and sustainable won’t shock you, they’ll help you live a better life. These two phrases are often used interchangeably, but actually have slightly different meanings. Not everyone knows how to use them. Do you?
Environmentally Friendly
Reference sources
The Cambridge dictionary tells us: “environmentally friendly
adjective (UK also environmentally-friendly)
UK /ɪn.vaɪ.rənˌmen.təl.i ˈfrend.li/ US /ɪn.vaɪr.ənˌmen.t̬əl.i ˈfrend.li/”
Going by this dictionary definition, we should probably start writing environmentally friendly as environmentally-friendly just be be accurate. But for the sake of consistency, we’ll just keep writing it as two words without a hyphen.
Wikipedia tells us: “Environment friendly processes, or environmental-friendly processes (also referred to as eco-friendly, nature-friendly, and green), are sustainability and marketing terms referring to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies that claim reduced, minimal, or no harm upon ecosystems or the environment.”
Industry authorities
Multi-national construction company Laing O’Rourke have a single page sustainability policy which reaffirms they have a net zero emissions target. They tell us how they want to get there, building resiliance into assets, into their business operations and “[r]ealising [their] sustainability potential through direct delivery and modern methods of construction”.
Okay so policies exist, but are sometimes filled with big words that don’t always mean anything concrete in the real world. Not that companies aren’t taking their responsibilities and pledges seriously. Just remember there are some companies who are just greenwashing and words help them do that.
In the real world
The phrase “environmentally friendly” is used often, also as “eco friendly”, to give people the idea that whatever product mentioned has a positive effect on the environment. In newspapers and magazines, it’s also used as a way to highlight stories that analyse the effect of humans on our planet.
For example, we might see stories asking “how environmentally friendly is…” and the story exploring how environmentally friendly a way of living or a product is. You will also find articles exploring personal choices like the effect using environmentally friendly products can have on our lives or even “Are real or fake Christmas trees better for the planet?”
Sustainable
Okay, let’s think about the word sustainable and what it means with textbook definitions, how organisations with authority in their industry that use the word and how the regular person on the street who uses the word.
Authority Sources
The Cambridge dictionary defines sustainable in two ways:
sustainable
adjective
UK /səˈsteɪ.nə.bəl/ US /səˈsteɪ.nə.bəl/
able to continue at the same level for a period of time:
Marketing plays a key role in a company’s plan for sustainable business development.
sustainable/growth/success/value The question of how to achieve long-term sustainable growth in shareholder value is re-emerging.
ENVIRONMENT, NATURAL RESOURCES
using methods that do not harm the environment so that natural resources are still available in the future:
The ethical brand donates 10% of profits to support sustainable development.
sustainable communities/energy sources.
Wikipedia says: “For many people, especially those from the environmental movement, sustainability is closely linked with environmental issues. This is also called “environmental sustainability”, and is explained with the “planetary boundaries” model. The public is concerned about human impacts on the environment. The most dominant environmental issues since about the year 2000 have been climate change, loss of biodiversity and environmental pollution and land degradation (such as deforestation and general degradation of ecosystems).
Industry authorities
Real world organisations at the top of their industry or even regulatory authorities have a big influence on the meaning of words.
Oceana Group
In the Seaspiracy documentary, Oceana who are an organisation that advocates for sustainable fishing could not define what it is. Apparently they “don’t have a position in that respect” despite being “a 501c non-profit ocean conservation organization focused on influencing specific policy decisions on the national level to preserve and restore the world’s oceans.” Brilliant.
European Commissioner of Fisheries and the Environment
The European Commissioner of Fisheries and the Environment also appeared in Seaspiracy and could give a definition of sustainability.

“Imagine that you have money in a bank, you have capital, you put, I don’t know, 100 in the bank. That 100, which is the capital, is giving you interest. As long as you are taking the interest, and spending the interest without touching the capital, then that is sustainability. As soon as you start taking away the capital as well, then you’ve entered the unsustainable cycle.”
Sustainability in the real world
We would go with the European Commissioner of Fisheries and the Environment’s definition of sustainability. It matches up with the main dictionary definition in that fishing that way would enable us to ‘continue at the same level for a period of time’, but then how long? I guess forever as long as we don’t use up the principal.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) place on seafood products, but “the term ‘sustainable’ is so vague that even bycatch of seabirds, dolphins and seals can be considered sustainable. This is not what consumers think of when they pick up a fillet of fish with the MSC blue tick”, said Seaspiracy director Ali Tabrizi.
The regular person on the street would be rightly confused if bycatch is a part of sustainable fishing. I’m sure most of us would assume some kind of environmentally friendly link, but that isn’t clearly the case in reality.
When it comes to being carbon neutral, companies think it’s a sustainable way to operate. Looking closer, neutrality just means they remove the same amount of carbon as they put into the atmosphere. It doesn’t improve a situation which desperately needs to be improved, so is that really sustainable?
The point here is that even if we could make absolutely everything 100% sustainable tomorrow, we still wouldn’t undo the harm we’ve already done. Just planting enough trees to offset our carbon emissions won’t kick in right away because the trees need time to grow.
Disconnect

There is a disconnect between what everyday people feel, what organisations say and the real meaning of sustainability.
What exactly we think as consumers when the word sustainable is mentioned seems to be linked directly with phrases like ‘eco’ and ‘environmentally friendly’. it’s kind of become a buzzword that can be slapped onto products and processes to make green-concious people take note.
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=seaspiracy
Differences Between Environmentally Friendly and Sustainable
Environmentally friendly is something that considers the environment and preserves it
Sustainable and sustainability refers to the use and exploitation of resources without consideration of the negative impact of such exploitation as long as there are factors in place to balance it.
As human beings, we use environmentally friendly and sustainable almost interchangeably.
How will you live a green lifestyle.