Sustainability is dead—long live purpose

In business conversations today, there’s generally an eye roll when someone brings up “sustainability” or “ESG.” Once a favorite of investors, boards, and marketers, sustainability has been politicized, deprioritized, and in many cases quietly shelved.

At the same time, a new headline dominates: AI. AI is the strategy, the investment thesis, the growth promise. It’s exciting…and it should be.

But amid the whiplash, we’ve stopped talking about something far more long-lasting: purpose. Even at the most recent meetings of global leaders in Davos, energy and climate played a role, but purpose took a backseat. And that’s a problem.

ESG is not purpose. AI is not purpose. Purpose is a human-centered commitment rooted in vision and values that answers a simple but essential question: Why? It is intentional, strategic, and foundational to trust and longevity. In an era when AI will accelerate everything from content to competition, purpose may just be the most powerful and differentiating commitment a company can make.

As a popular saying notes: Digital technologies don’t erase values; they amplify them. So if sustainability has become politically fraught and AI is becoming operationally inevitable, it raises a bigger question: What actually matters long-term?

FROM GREENWASHING TO GREENHUSHING

Over the past two years, many companies have quietly pulled sustainability out of the spotlight. Teams have shrunk, initiatives have been folded into broader efficiency mandates, and messaging around the efforts has softened. From the outside, it might even look like a full retreat.

The reality is more complex. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that most firms have actually continued their sustainability efforts but are choosing to talk about them less publicly, something that analysts are now calling “greenhushing.” Roughly 90% of the Fortune Global 500 still report on ESG annually, and global surveys show that 83% of companies increased sustainability spending in 2025, with a meaningful share raising investment by 20% or more.

Performance data is often cited as justification. For example, Kroll found that companies with higher ESG ratings delivered average annual returns of roughly 12.9%, compared with 8.6% for lower-rated peers. But ESG reporting can be noisy, and correlation doesn’t always mean causation. It’s becoming clear that long-term performance depends on something bigger.

As AI drives more speed and scale across business (often making things feel more alike), the need for something beyond ESG is only growing.

PURPOSE + AI IS THE WINNING COMBINATION

As AI dramatically reduces the cost of producing content, experiences, and even entire product catalogs, competition will normalize and differentiation will become harder to sustain. Sameness is inevitable. That makes purpose more important, not less.

The companies that succeed over the next decade won’t be the ones shouting the loudest about sustainability or AI. They’ll be the ones using AI to scale missions that actually matter to people.

Beyond efficiency gains, AI enables personalization, allowing companies to serve individual tastes, needs, and values at scale. As Simon Sinek famously said, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” AI gives organizations a way to turn their “why” into “why me”—a shift that could shape the next era of consumer engagement.

As AI integrates into business systems, it’s boosting traceability, improving efficiency, and spotting fraud—creating real value while building trust. If it’s used carelessly, it commoditizes. If it’s used with purpose, it multiplies. Businesses will win by delivering better products, less waste, more personalization, cleaner value chains, smarter consumption, and greater control over choices. These aren’t environmental ideals. They’re human needs.

PURPOSE RUNS DEEPER THAN ESG

Purpose isn’t a reporting framework. It’s an intention to solve a real human problem that matters. It answers why. When ESG initiatives don’t drive meaningful value, solve genuine pain points, or reinforce an organization’s core mission, they become performative.

Research published in 2024 and 2025 by Kantar, Edelman, Gallup, Deloitte, and NYU Stern shows a common pattern: Companies that embed purpose into products, operations, and incentives outperform those that do not. They demonstrate stronger growth, greater pricing power, lower operating risk, and higher trust with both customers and employees.

The real performance opportunity isn’t showy-sustainability. It’s clarity of purpose. If that purpose leads to positive social or environmental outcomes, that’s an excellent result, but ESG alone is not a proxy for success.

THE CONSUMER SHIFT FROM “WE” TO “ME”

As leaders have said before, purpose has shifted from “we” to “me.”

After years of economic uncertainty, cultural fatigue, and global disruption, consumers are focused on meeting their individual needs rather than collective ideals. They still want value alignment, but they’re less interested in saving the world and more interested in saving themselves.

For brands, this creates a new challenge. Connection—it needs to be personal. Empathy, relevance, and usefulness now drive purchase decisions more than narratives and flashy content. Consumers also want facts, not fluff. Clear transparency about who made a product, where it came from, and what stands behind it is essential. As AI-generated content and complex supply chains quickly spread, credibility will become harder to earn. And this is exactly where AI changes the stakes. It enhances personalization and skepticism at the same time. In a world where AI can generate anything, trust becomes the thing that sets you apart. And trust is built on purpose.

THE REAL RISK OF ABANDONING PURPOSE

The biggest risk facing companies today isn’t overcommitting to purpose. It’s abandoning it.

When AI makes it faster and cheaper to create products and messaging, sameness is inevitable. Without purpose, loyalty erodes, trust is gone, and employees disengage, particularly as AI reshapes roles and expectations. Research consistently shows that purpose-driven organizations see higher retention, stronger performance, and greater resilience during periods of change. This is why purpose can’t remain a messaging exercise. It has to become operational.

Purpose is growing up, from “we” to “me,” and from storytelling to system design. In an AI-accelerated world, leaning into this shift with intention will be the most competitive strategy of an organization.

Kristy Caylor is CEO of Trashie.