"It's more expensive but it's sustainable."
You said that to yourself. I heard you. I've said it too — that exact phrase, or one of its cousins. "It's an investment piece." "At least it's not fast fashion." "I'll have it forever."
Notice the timing: you said it before you clicked buy. Not after. The excuse was ready before the act.
I've never purchased anything over a certain price threshold without rehearsing why it's okay. The justification comes first, then the click. Every time. And for a long time, I thought I was generating these reasons myself — that I was working through the ethics in real time, arriving at my own conclusions, making a considered choice.
I wasn't. Neither are you.
In 1957, two criminologists figured out why people do things they know are wrong without feeling bad about it.1
Gresham Sykes and David Matza were studying juvenile delinquents, and they noticed something strange. The kids who stole cars and broke into houses weren't amoral monsters. They still believed stealing was wrong. They still felt shame when caught. So how could they do it?
The answer: they developed techniques for temporarily suspending their own values. Not afterwards, as excuses. Beforehand, as permission.
Sykes and Matza called these "techniques of neutralization," and they were careful to distinguish them from rationalizations. A rationalization comes after — you did the thing, and now you're explaining it away. A neutralization comes before. It makes the act possible in the first place. In their words: neutralizations "precede deviant behavior and make deviant behavior possible."1
The social controls that would normally stop you? They get "rendered inoperative," and you're "freed to engage" without serious damage to your self-image.1
Freed to engage. That's the phrase that stayed with me.
They identified five techniques — most of us will recognise versions of them in our own self-talk. Here's how they sound when the thing you're neutralizing isn't a crime but a checkout button:
There are no good options anyway. One purchase doesn't really matter. Those critics are hypocrites too. My family needs this. The planet's already screwed.
You recognise these. The denial that it's your fault, the denial that anyone's hurt, the appeal to priorities higher than some abstract environmental standard. These aren't original thoughts. They're a playbook.
The question is: where did they come from?
In 2007, researchers applied Sykes and Matza's framework to ethical consumption.2 They wanted to understand why people who care about Fair Trade don't actually buy it. The answer: neutralization. Consumers used the same five techniques to explain why they couldn't, this time, in this shop, under these circumstances, buy the ethical option even though they believed in it.2
But here's what that research missed. It focused on why people don't buy ethical products. What about when they do buy — or when they buy something that isn't ethical but needs to feel okay?
That's where the brand steps in.
On many product pages right now — particularly from brands that position themselves as sustainable, or at least try — look at the copy block. The "sustainable materials" tab. The little badge.
You'll find the alibis pre-written.
"Sustainably sourced." "Carbon neutral." "Made in small batches." "Family-owned." "Supports local communities."
I'm going to call this the Alibi Menu. You can spot it when you click "sustainable materials" not to learn if it's sustainable, but to load the alibi that makes clicking "add to cart" possible.
Look at the language more closely. "Sustainably sourced" is denial of injury — nobody's being hurt, the materials are fine. "Family-owned" and "small batch" are appeals to higher loyalties — your purchase supports real people, a smaller unit that deserves your priority.3 "Join thousands of customers who chose..." is condemnation of the condemners — everyone does this, so how bad can it be?
The techniques aren't invented fresh each time. They're on the page before you arrive.
This explains something that's puzzled researchers for decades. In 2019, roughly two-thirds of consumers said they wanted to buy from sustainable brands; only about a quarter actually did.4 The attitude-behaviour gap. We've known about it since the 1970s. We've tried fixing it with better information, clearer labels, more transparency. The gap persists.
If the gap were about information, it would shrink as information improves. It doesn't.
The alibi theory explains why. The gap persists because the alibis make it livable. The product page doesn't close the gap — it maintains it. The "sustainable materials" tab doesn't help you be consistent. It helps you survive being inconsistent. That's the service.
Research on Amazon's Climate Pledge Friendly badge found it improves sales rank by roughly 12.5% within eight weeks after the label appears, with broader studies showing sustainability labels increase demand by 13-14%.5 But here's the interesting part: the boost wasn't driven by consumers actively searching for sustainable options. It was what researchers called "passive search" — the effect is consistent with people noticing the label without explicitly seeking sustainable options, driven by the information the label conveys.5
The alibi doesn't require study. It requires availability.
Now, the reasonable defence. Ethical messaging is transparency. It helps consumers make informed choices in markets where sustainability attributes aren't directly observable. Without labels, consumers can't distinguish sustainable from unsustainable. Even imperfect messaging is better than none.
This is true. Labels do serve an informational function. The question is whether that's the main function.
If information were the primary purpose, we'd expect consumers to read the content, not just clock its presence. We'd expect specific claims to outperform vague ones. We'd expect the attitude-behaviour gap to shrink as messaging improves. None of that happens.
According to the certification body's own surveys, 86% of adults who are aware of B Corp Certification report at least some trust in it (some, a lot, or very high).6 Most of those consumers have never read the B-Corp standards. They trust the badge. And trust in a badge enables its alibi function. You need to believe the excuse to use it.
Here's where I'd offer you five steps to stop selecting alibis. A mindfulness practice for ethical consumption. But there's no policy fix for the whisper at checkout. You can't regulate what people tell themselves.
What I can offer is a test. The alibi test. Before you click buy, ask: would I purchase this without the sustainability tab? If the tab is necessary for the purchase to feel okay, the tab is doing more than informing.
Sometimes the answer is: yes, I'd buy it anyway, and the tab is just nice to have. Fine. Sometimes the answer is: no, I need the tab to be there. That's the alibi.
The point isn't to make you feel bad. The point is to notice that the justification wasn't yours. You selected it from a menu someone else prepared.
The alibi menu is always open. The specials change seasonally — "carbon neutral" was popular last year, "regenerative" is trending now — but the format stays the same. Denial of injury at the top. Appeal to higher loyalties in the middle. Condemnation of condemners in the reviews section.
Look, I'm not saying you're wrong to use it. The alibis are professionally designed. They're optimised for selection. Of course you reach for them. That's what they're for.
But we could stop pretending the justifications are ours. They never were. They were on the page before we arrived.
The excuse you whisper at checkout? You didn't write it. You selected it from a menu someone else prepared. That's not weakness. That's efficiency. The inner PR team knows how to work with what it's given.
The alibi menu is always open. But you don't have to order.