Consulting

Greenwash

photo credit: “© Greenpeace / Fotopress”

Greenwash is a term coined in the 1990s from a combination of green and whitewash. It is used to describe the deliberate use of green marketing or communication to conceal fundamentally unsound environmental practices, or to persuade consumers of unjustified green credentials of a company, with a view to persuading them to buy its products. It's serious and widespread, and fraudulent because it creates perceptions and benefits that are untrue. Consumers could be persuaded to buy products which are not what they are purported to be, or to invest in companies that are a higher risk than they appear because environmental and therefore consumer related risks are concealed.

Greenwash comes in many flavours.

• The use of advertising promoting environmental stories or images which are only a tiny part of the companies activities, giving a misleading impression of the whole
• Falsely claiming environmental credentials or associations.
• Publishing incorrect or misleading claims about the scientific attributes or environmental benefits of products
• Promoting products as natural when they are in fact chemical compounds
• Spending more advertising environmental activities or philanthropy than on the activities themselves
• Cloaking with green fundamentally unsustainable industries and business models such as fossil fuel exploitation
• Advising others to act sustainably without being sustainable yourself
• Environmental labelling systems which purport to provide assurances of environmental responsibility, but where weak regulations, oversight or audit requirements fail to live up to their commitments.

Nestle, Shell, BP, HP and many more have been singled out by leading NGOs such as Greenpeace for perpetrating greenwash. The above photograph shows a ‘greenwash’ protest by Greenpeace in New Zealand. The purpose of the protest was to highlight Mighty River Power’s attempt to ‘greenwash’ their image by sponsoring a Sustainabliity Conference.

Its much harder to hide now. Blogs, such as www.turnuptheheat.org and NGOs combine to highlight greenwash abuse. Often high profile companies are deliberately chosen for attack, not because they are necessarily worse than others in the same industry, but because their renown better highlights the issues of concern. Making inappropriate environmental claims now comes with a serious risk of exposure. This damages credibility about their products and product claims, and worse. In a world of much greater sustainability awareness, it makes the perpetrators look ignorant and out of tune with changing consumer preferences and values. Greenpeace’s chiding of Apple through their ‘green my apple’ campaign www.greenpeace.org/apple/ with such slogans as “I love my Mac I just wish it came in green” is a clever example.

Bluewash

From green to blue. Bluewash is a derogatory term describing the relationship between companies which sign up to the Global Compact and The United Nations to allude to a social conscience. The UN’s Global Compact defines nine sustainability principles by which companies should operate. There is nothing wrong with the principles, but there are no admission mechanisms beyond application and a commitment to adhere to the principles, and there are no auditing mechanism to ensure that the principles are observed in practice. Critics therefore argue that The Global Compact merely serves to provide cynical companies with a convenient public relations humanitarian screen. There is evidence from the nature and extent of membership that there is some truth in these claims. Sustainable Enterprise Ltd supports the Global Compact as a basis for spreading the principles of sustainability and corporate responsibility, but counsels citizens to be wary of placing much credence on membership as denoting any special ethical credentials. Indeed founding compact companies such as Bayer and Nestle have been widely criticized for their poor human rights and environmental records.

Our message to sustainable enterprises is to keep sustainability claims, simple, clear and authentic. Consumer and NGO backlash if you do not can be profound.