Greenwashing
When it sounds too good to be true…
When it sounds too good to be true…
Greenwashing is a behavior that makes an entity seem more environmentally friendly than it is. Corporations are the first to have started this phenomenon but even governments are guilty of it. There are truly green products out there and not all instances of greenwashing are an attempt to manipulate us, some are just misinformed campaigns created by people who don’t know what true sustainability is.
As people became more aware of the environmental issues human activities cause, they started rewarding companies that mitigate their climate impacts and now they even demand it. Statistics tell us about how environmentally friendly products and services are chosen despite the higher price tags and even employees that choose to work with a specific company based on the ethics they apply in their activity.
So, companies adapted to the point where today, in 2023, it’s hard to find products that don’t have any green claims attached to them. But these claims don’t just cause us to spend more money on lies but make climate change worse, harm communities and the environment they swore to protect. Now, there is a separate green industry that only keeps growing.
In the remainder of this article, we will talk about the details of greenwashing as a phenomenon, where it came from, how we got to this point and what the future holds.
It is crucial that we, as consumers, are aware and talk about the instances of greenwashing that we encounter as it has the potential to shape our future.
Greenwashing is a behavior or activity that makes companies seem more involved in protecting the environment than they are.
The consumer is exposed to greenwashing mostly through communication and marketing strategies deployed by companies, governments, institutions, in the attempt to forge an ecologically responsible image of themselves. Many times, these deliver unsubstantiated claims that are meant to deceive customers. Products are greenwashed through the process of renaming, rebranding, or repackaging.
We can distinguish three categories of greenwashed advertising:
It might be that one commercial contains a combination of two or more from the above list, or none.
Some of the marketing techniques used to imply that products are environmentally friendly are the use of images of nature, the color green or terms that might or may not be legally defined like eco-friendly, compostable, natural, sustainable, biodegradable, renewable, recyclable.
Research papers describe the phenomenon of greenwashing as a selective disclosure, with two main behaviours regarding the company’s environmental performance, occurring at the same time:
It is not exactly clear when the term “greenwashing” first occurred in the public discourse. There are mentions of the term being used by ecological activist in the 1970s, even the 1960s but most sources point to the year 1986 and Jay Westerveld, an activist, ecologist, and researcher of habitats associated with endangered species.
As the story goes, somewhere in the mid-1980s Jay was in Samoa studying tooth-billed pigeons. He stopped in Fiji to surf and while he was staying in some bungalows, he sneaked in a hotel room of the Beachcomber Resort to find some clean towels. That is where he noticed a sign saying:
“Save Our Planet: Every day, millions of gallons of water are used to wash towels that have only been used once.
You make the choice: A towel on the rack means, ‘I will use again.’
A towel on the floor means, ‘Please replace.’
Thank you for helping us conserve the Earth’s vital resources.”
The card was decorated with the three green arrows that make up the recycling symbol. At that time the resort was expanding, and Jay started thinking about the many ways in which the expansion and the functioning of the resort endangered the habitats of different species on the island while they were taunting customers with reusing towels and as such lowering the water bill and saving money for the company. In practice, the money invested in creating those cards could have gone to conservation actions.
Later, Jay wrote an essay on the topic in a New York based magazine and that is when the term caught on. The essay itself is not available on the internet but in a 2011 phone interview Jay said:
“The word ‘greenwashing’ just came to me. It seemed really logical, pretty simple, kind of like whitewashing.”
It is now said that one of the first demonstrated cases of greenwashing is the Keep America Beautiful campaign.
Keep America Beautiful (KAB) is an organization that was created in 1953 by the packaging industry and large beverage companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, with up to 75 corporations providing funds. It ran multiple campaigns throughout the years, all of which had the purpose to promote the idea that litter was the fault of consumers. It used activities such as cleanups, fixed yearly taxes, anti-litter education and later recycling to stop legislation that would have made the companies responsible for the waste their products created.
Westinghouse’s nuclear power division reacted to the 1960’s anti-nuclear movement by running multiple printed ads, declaring nuclear plants were “odourless […] neat, clean, and safe” and another photograph of a nuclear plant nestled by a pristine lake. These adds were deemed to be greenwashing because when they appeared, there have already been nuclear meltdowns in two states, which brings doubt to the word “safe” and the adds completely ignored the environmental impact of nuclear waste.
By “Earth Day 20” in 1990 a fourth of all household products were being advertised as “recyclable,” biodegradable,” “ozone friendly” or “compostable.”
Studies conducted in 1991 showed that roughly 58% of all the advertisements related to the environment protection were in some way misleading the customer.
Greenwashing increased around the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the leading topics, steadily increasing, are climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and global pollution. Oil and gas companies lobby more, as expected, considering the main discussion topics of the past years.
As people’s interest for environmental protection increased over the years, corporations are working hard to paint themselves as proactively involved with the protection of people and nature. This is no longer an option, but a demand from the customer’s side.
Greenwashing is a complex phenomenon and the reasons behind it are numerous. However, the starting point, as is for many other things, is capitalism.
Capitalism as an economic system is organised around the imperative of constant growth. Companies that function in this system need to do the same, constantly expand and grow their profits for the benefit of the investors and to ultimately survive in today’s market. Even countries that are not capitalist in themselves need to abide by some of the same rules to remain relevant in the global economy.
To maintain this growth, companies need to produce more stuff while people need to buy and consume more. Marketing and the advertising industry took care of exploiting human insecurities to trick consumers into feeling that they need certain products and the latest versions to be relevant, accepted, admired.
The worst part about the measures of growth capitalism utilizes is that they outsource a large portion of the costs. So, while a technology company earns billions in sales, the environmental costs of mining the raw materials remain in Africa, the human exploitation of factory workers and even child labour remains in Asia.
Combine this with the increasing awareness of the population starting with the 1960s and onwards, and companies have a real incentive to protect and even expand their profits. Greenwashing has been a very lucrative tool to do so. By applying careful tactics corporations managed to keep up consumption levels while shifting the discussion and dodging the responsibility for the waste that results from that consumption.
The main reason greenwashing is bad is because it sells an illusion, erodes trust, and continues planetary degradation.
It sells the illusion that we can live a life of convenience. We can have an abundance of things, constantly keep up to date with new releases and it will be fine cause once we don’t need something we can either recycle or donate it.
This is incredibly harmful because it offers an excuse to continue consumption and a harmful example of what to strive for in developing countries. As we currently stand, there are huge gaps in consumption, as Jason Hickel describes in his book, “Less is more”. For example:
This is not and cannot be a sustainable level of consumption no matter how much we try to greenwash it. Recycling as a system is imperfect and not all materials we use can be effectively recycled in the first place. Hardware recycling and clothing donations are littering Africa, sitting in huge dumps, causing environmental problems.
Another ill effect of greenwashing is the effect it has on the direct customers. Navigating green labels is extremely hard, then finding out how much of it is just a lie or an overstatement, consumers lose confidence in products, companies and even entire industries. They just give up entirely out of despair thinking that all companies lie and there is no point in caring. It drives us to inaction in a world that needs us to be involved. It fosters decision fatigue and all the pitfalls that come with it. Truly green products do exist, so do companies that actually work on mitigating their environmental impacts. You just need to find them.
Greenwashing also exacerbates planetary destruction by delaying relevant actions we could be taking today to mitigate climate change. It does so first by fostering unsustainable consumption, by lobbying and shifting narratives to influence legislation or by overstating the efficiency of certain systems and technologies.
Consider the offset programs: companies can offset their carbon emissions, but also their water usage and biodiversity impacts. But carbon offset programs were revealed as being less effective than advertised with villages being evicted to plant trees, the wrong types of trees being planted or them being planted in places where water availability cannot sustain them.
As the Keep America Beautiful campaigns put the plastic waste issue on customers and governments, proposing other, inferior efficiency solutions instead of addressing the root causes has delayed legislation that could have made a difference. Lobbying from certain industries moves large amounts of money from corporations to politicians or political parties. Oil and gas are one industry that relies heavily on lobbying. They were found to have hidden the effects of fossil fuel extraction and usage regarding climate change, the environmental impacts of extraction and accidental spills is significant, they exploit global fears regarding “energetic independence”, were found to secretly plot ways to increase single use plastic markets in case legislation does reduce other arms of their business. And yet, in 2024, as we are looking towards a bleak future, the industry is still highly unregulated, big banks are financing projects all over the world, including the Amazon rainforest, further endangering ecosystems.
Almost all companies have pledged to become carbon neutral or to eliminate harmful practices by 2030-2050. But if you look at the actions they are taking and the monetary investment compared to total revenue, you can clearly see that many will probably miss that target. Frequently these targets are based on technologies that are currently not efficient enough or scalable to reach these goals. One example is carbon capture. It might well be that we do invent something great or vastly improve an existing technology but is it something we should bet our future on?
The most complete guide on recognizing greenwashing was elaborated by TerraChoice, a Canadian-based environmental marketing agency. The seven sins of greenwashing, as it is called, was created originally for companies to help them avoid greenwashing accusations and allow them to tell the stories they want while doing so.
The company did evaluations for a couple of years around 2007 where it conducted a survey in US and Canadian stores, evaluating thousands of products. The conclusions they reached were that over 95% of labels making any sort of green claim are false or misleading. Because the evaluation did not mention product names, the report itself was accused of failing the greenwashing check they used for the products themselves.
TerraChoice has been acquired by UL Environment, a division of Underwriters Laboratories. The group is in the business of creating green product standards and selling claims verification services to manufacturers, which rings an alarm for a conflict of interest.
Despite of all the above, their Seven Sins are still great for consumers to use when trying to evaluate products or claims. Asking yourself the below questions can help you differentiate between actual green initiatives/products and greenwashing:
Stephen J. Scanlan from Ohio State University added 6 new sins on top after conducting research on how oil and gas communicated about hydraulic fracking:
There are way too many greenwashing examples but looking at a few in detail is useful to establish a habit to think about the advertising messages that bombard us daily and not just internalize them without much thought. This way marketing stops subliminally leading our lives.
Most, if not all, bottled water commercials show images of pristine nature, untouched by man, combined with health claims regarding proper hydration. What they don’t mention is that some bottled water is just filtered tap water. If it is spring water, then you need to place a factory in that pristine spot and that can jeopardize the water source and the entire surrounding environment. For example, Fiji water is shipped all around the world but 47% of Fijians don’t have access to clean drinking water. To add on top of it, it is packaged in single use plastic which, if transported in high temperature conditions, leaches micro-plastics in the water. Plus, it adds to the existing plastic problem.
Dorna, a Romanian water brand that is owned by Coca-Cola, installed 5 river nets to clean up plastic waste, gathering 700 kg of trash. Great initiative but if you put things in perspective and think about Coca-Cola being the worst plastic polluter in the world with 3 million tons of plastic packaging produced yearly, this effort isn’t even worth mentioning and yet it made national news.
Energy transition is aggressively pushed as our way out of fossil fuel usage and there is no denial about it having a role to play. What isn’t mentioned at all is the amount of material extraction that would be needed for solar panels, wind utilities and electric cars. This will require massive increases compared to current levels. The World Bank estimates that the production of minerals, such as graphite, lithium, and cobalt, could increase by nearly 500% by 2050. As a result, environmental and social problems are almost unavoidable, yet, except for UN officials claiming this needs to be done “sustainably”, not much else is discussed publicly.
As an attempt to distract the world from human rights abuses and fossil fuel extraction, Saudi Arabia announced that they will be planting 50 billion trees in the desert as a plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060. The tree planting would be combined with carbon capture and storage technology. What they wouldn’t be doing is stopping the extraction of fossil fuels.
A Singapore-based non-profit backed by big oil and chemical companies that has different projects to clean up plastic waste in developing countries. A Reuters investigation however discovered that they failed one of their main projects to clean up the Ganges River in India and that the companies backing them plan to ramp up plastic production. They also published an article to their website which argued against bans or other means of reducing waste and instead pushed the power of recycling.
The emissions scandal was a case of greenwashing that had a direct negative impact on the environment. Various vehicles they manufactured had the ability to detect when they were hooked up to the tester and altered the performance to reduce the emissions level. While this was going on, the company actively promoted the low-emissions and eco-friendly features of their cars.
Ikea was considered a sustainable company before it was found that it was linked to illegal logging in Eastern Europe. The wood certification Ikea uses, Forest Stewardship Council, was described as an organization that greenwashed the timber industry. It repeatedly failed to catch the sourcing of conflict wood.
To remain in the realm of certifications, the SFI is an organization that offers certifications if companies obey their Forest Management and Fiber Sourcing Standards. These standards however are very lax, they include protections that are legal requirements and not much above that.
As pe these standards, they average clearcut they approve is the size of 90 football fields (481,609.35 m2). It allows the use of dangerous pesticides, logging of old-growth forests, endangered forests and turning natural forests into pine plantations.
Multiple banks are now selling “green investment” packages, investment funds marketed as “socially responsible investing” opportunities. The advertised benefit is that you can invest in the markets and grow your money while caring for the environmental and social impact those businesses have.
The problem is that the evaluation criteria and the composition of the funds are not put centre stage. You might need to dig to find what companies are included. And it was found that some of these funds include companies that are clearly not green like oil, tobacco, and airlines to name a few.
Banks are advertising themselves as leaders in the green transition while they are lending enormous sums to industries that most contribute to global warming like fossil fuels and deforestations. In the 5 years since the Paris Agreement, the world’s 60 biggest banks have financed fossil fuels to the tune of $3.8 trillion.
There are multiple examples of clear greenwashing in these industries. Here are a few of them:
Chevron – “People Do” campaign is about how Chevron and its employees helping animals or protecting animals. The campaign was very effective, sales and the public image of the company went. While it was running the ads, it was also violating the clean air act, the clean water act and spilling oil into wildlife refuges.
DuPont – Conoco division’s “Applause”, animals being happy for Conoco swapping out 2 of its ships with new, double hulled ones, thus being protected from oil spills. It makes these double-hulled ships seem like their invention, but these were used for years by the army and following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March of 1989 new legislation was advanced to make it mandatory for oil tankers to have double-hulls.
DuPont – “Better things for better living” while poisoning environments by spilling their waste into the surrounding environment, covering up serious health effects of the chemicals they used in the production process and bringing PFOA to all our bloodstreams.
British Petroleum – rebranded in 2001 to Beyond Petroleum, spent $45 million to purchase Solarex, one of the largest solar energy corporations but spends over $5 billion over five years on oil exploration in Alaska alone.
Shell – “Profits or Principles” touts Shell’s commitment to renewable energy sources and features photos of lush green forests and other nature. But Shell spends a miniscule 0.6% of its annual investments on renewables. Internal documents show that Shell knew about the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change since the 1980s but the only action they took was to adjust their marketing campaigns. Their pledge to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement are based on carbon capture and storage technologies that are not currently available or efficient enough.
When they wanted to start drilling in the Arctic circle, Greenpeace and The Yes Lab created a mock website that featured numerous ad proposals on the topic. The goal of raising awareness was achieved and, despite having exploration licenses, they halted any further exploration.
This list is not exhaustive. From fast fashion to home cleaning products, greenwashing is everywhere.
Rules and regulations vary from country to country and the best way to know what is applicable to the region you live in is to check your own country’s regulations on the topics of false advertising and customer protection.
In the European Union the first attempt to address greenwashing was made in the 1980s when the first common rules aimed at protecting consumers against misleading advertisements were adopted. In 2005 the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive was published . This directive has been reviewed and a new interpretation and application was published in 2021.
The UCPD Guidance provides additional legal interpretation on key questions and topics, for example:
In January 2024 the European Parliament approved a new greenwashing directive that outlines stricter rules surrounding the use of environmental claims. The list of prohibited practices includes early obsolescence, the use of generic environmental statements such as “eco-friendly”, “ecological”, and “biodegradable”, non-independently accredited certifications on labels, advertising of irrelevant features and claims of carbon neutrality based off the purchasing of carbon credits. This directive will be translated into law for each member state in the upcoming months.
In the USA the FTC enforces false advertising laws on behalf of consumers. All states have their own laws regulating false advertising. At a Federal level, the Lanham Act allows civil lawsuits for false advertising that “misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin” of goods or services.
Australia also has a very descriptive guide for consumers and companies regarding false advertising and how to avoid it. The consumer protections are in place since 2011.
Asia is also ramping up on legislation meant to curb greenwashing. In 2023 South Korea became the first country in Asia to fine a company for false environmental claims in advertising. Meanwhile, China and Singapore are working on ways to collect ESG (Environmental, social, and corporate governance) data from companies in a more structured way with the purpose of increasing transparency. Japan authorities talk about regulatory actions to be undertaken against ESG greenwashing.
The African continent is behind in terms of developing taxonomy policies that address greenwashing or adhere to Environmental, Social, and Government (EGS) criteria. However, there are general consumer protection and false advertising regulations. There is a reluctance in creating such legislation as it would discourage investment and the system would be costly to implement and monitor. However, this opens the door for companies that are moving base because of the stricter regulations in their country, moving pollution and environmental destruction to Africa.
The easiest way to avoid greenwashing is to read the labels, including any small prints that might be available. One of the key differences between an actual green product and greenwashing is transparency. A green product will put any details regarding the claims it is making or differences from other competitors in a visible place, it will use simple and straightforward language, and you won’t be forced to dig deep for further details if you want them. Navigating the information should be easy.
For everything else, use your critical thinking and don’t forget to take the entire product lifecycle in consideration. The 7 Sins of Greenwashing come in handy when used as a checklist of questions to ask.
The situation, as it stands, is that 100 companies are responsible for most of the pollution, be that plastic or greenhouse gas emissions. Companies dodged legislation through a combination of lobbying, linguistic detoxification (when things are renamed to seem less horrible than they are), shifting baselines and changing narratives. This has worked well so far since many cleanups and waste management are done by citizens, governments with citizen tax money, with minimal expenses on the part of the companies themselves.
In their opinion the customer is to blame because demand fuels the production. As Coca Cola stated, they will not bring the glass bottle back because the customer demands the convenience of using single use plastic bottles. Keep America Beautiful told us decades ago that litterbugs are to blame for the mess and BP told us to calculate and reduce our carbon footprint.
It is easy to feel that nothing we do will make a dent in the situation we find ourselves in. Younger generations experience this feeling in a more extreme manner, through what psychologists call eco-anxiety.
So, should we accept that we cannot win when facing huge corporations, government, corruption, and political incompetence? Should we just give up? Or is there something that we could do?
In her latest book, “The book of hope”, a collaboration with Doug Abrams, Jane Goodall talks about her reasons for hope and how she truly believes that we can get out of the mess we created. Among many other things she explains that society is like a net and each one of us is a knot. Whenever a knot changes in any way, it influences the surrounding knots. In other words, despite each of our actions being insignificant in the totality of it all, many drops create an ocean and change is completely achievable.
In her book, “Arguing for a better world”, Arianne Shahvisi has a similar point to make. She acknowledges that we cannot change the world, but our actions can make things better in the community we live in. We need to break free from the perceived needs the marketing industry pushes on us, the social stratification imposed and maintained by capitalism and address situations that contribute to social inequality. This includes poverty and discrimination. People living in poverty don’t have the money to choose the better, more ethical products. People worried about what to put on the table won’t have the energy to think about women in sweatshops, child labour or environmental destruction.
Access to information, education and a basic quality of life are crucial prerequisites to fighting climate change with everything that entails, including the minimization or elimination of greenwashing. Ask questions, demand answers, use your critical thinking. In her book “Buy Better Consume Less”, Sian Conway-Wood suggests we go even further by reporting greenwashing when we encounter it and speak out about it. I a world where demand fuels production boycotts are an efficient tool. If you wish to join forces with other people, you can check the ongoing boycotts list on the ethicalconsumer.org page.
Besides work that we do within the community, our purchases do matter! It is important to support truly green products and tax companies that resort to greenwashing.
Another important thing is to vote. Vote for parties and politicians that support the appropriate legislation, lobby, protest and use your status as citizen to make it clear what you want from the people chosen to lead your country.
However, the single biggest thing we can do as individuals is to consume less. When shopping refuse unnecessary packaging, try to avoid single use products as much as possible and use reusables for what you can.
Change is possible, change is happening, even though it seems to happen slowly. We have changed many things already. There now are legal and moral consequences for actions that were deemed acceptable a few years or decades ago.
In The book of hope one of Jane’s reasons for hope is the power of young people. Given the information and the power to choose what they act on, they will create all sorts of projects that will work on improving the world they live in. From eliminating single use plastic from their schools, to cleanups, nature preservation or reforestation actions and many more were possible thanks to her Roots & Shoots program.
Keep doing your best, spread the information, speak up whenever you notice injustice or manipulation, and most importantly be kind to yourself and others!