Environmental strategies implemented today are strongly influenced by the ideologies capitalism, neoliberalism and ecomodernism. As such, they should promote global economic expansion while mitigating environmental impact. This is in line with the prevailing environmental political discourse of sustainable development, in which economic, ecological and social dimensions are considered compatible and dependent on each other. However, this essay challenges the normative assumption regarding the win-win-win narrative by examining the economic, ecological and social consequences of Max Burgers’ environmental strategies through three critical scientific theories. By posing an ideology critique and through the lens of our theoretical framework, we find that Max Burgers mystifies the apparent relation between local economic growth, global ecological impact and divided social progress, thus reinforcing unequal power dynamics and patterns of uneven development.