Greenwashing
Greenwashing, also called green sheen, is a form of advertising or marketing spin that deceptively uses green PR and green marketing to persuade the public that an organization's products, goals, or policies are environmentally friendly. Companies that intentionally adopt greenwashing communication strategies often do so to distance themselves from their environmental lapses or those of their suppliers. Firms engage in greenwashing for two primary reasons: to appear legitimate and to project an image of environmental responsibility to the wider public. Since there is no harmonized and international definition of greenwashing, its determination in a given instance can be a subjective challenge for consumers and regulatory bodies.
Occurrence
Greenwashing occurs when an organization spends significantly more resources on "green" advertising than on environmentally sound practices. Many corporations use greenwashing to improve public opinion of their brands. Complex corporate structures can further obscure the bigger picture.Corporations attempt to capitalize on consumers' environmental guilt. Critics of the practice suggest that the rise of greenwashing, combined with ineffective regulation and lack of its actual enforcement, contributes to consumer skepticism of all green claims and diminishes the power of the consumer to influence companies toward greener manufacturing processes and business operations. Greenwashing covers up unsustainable corporate agendas and policies. Highly public accusations of greenwashing have contributed to the term's increasing use.
Moreover, the act of greenwashing directly undermines "green trust" in consumers, which also harms the credibility and profitability of the company making the practice. Accurate green marketing can serve as a competitive advantage, but its misuse as greenwashing can lead to the company being perceived as morally irresponsible, damaging its reputation.
Greenwashing has recently increased to meet consumer demand for environmentally-friendly goods and services. New regulations, laws, and guidelines put forward by organizations such as the Committee of Advertising Practice in the UK aim to discourage companies from using greenwashing to deceive consumers. At the same time, activists have been increasingly inclined to accuse companies of greenwashing, with inconsistent standards as to what activities merit such an accusation.
Characteristics
Activities deemed to be characteristic of greenwashing can vary by time and place, product, and the opinions or expectations of the person making the determination.According to the United Nations, greenwashing can present itself in many ways, such as claiming that the company will achieve future environment milestones while not putting sufficient plans in place to do so, being intentionally vague about operations or using vague claims that cannot be specifically proven, saying that a product does not contain harmful materials or use harmful practices that they would not use anyways, highlighting one thing the company does well regarding the environment while not doing anything else, and promoting products that meet regulatory minimums as if peer products do not.
Additionally, TerraChoice, an environmental consulting division of UL, described the "seven sins of greenwashing" in 2007 to "help consumers identify products that made misleading environmental claims":
- "Hidden Trade-off", which claims a product is "green" based on an unreasonably narrow set of attributes without attention to other critical environmental issues.
- "No proof", a claim that cannot be substantiated by easily accessible information or a reliable third-party certification.
- "Vagueness" is a poorly defined or broad claim that the consumer will likely misunderstand, such as 'all-natural.'
- "Worshipping False Labels", which is a claim that, through words or images, gives the impression of a third-party endorsement where none exists.
- "Irrelevance", which is a claim that may be truthful but unimportant or unhelpful to consumers seeking environmentally preferable products.
- "Lesser of Two Evils", a claim that may be true within the product category, but risks distracting consumers from the more significant environmental impact of the category.
- "Fibbing", which is a claim that is simply false.
The characteristics and concept of greenwashing are vaguely defined, and some only consider environmental claims, while others also factor in deception regarding corporate social responsibility. Additionally, scholars make a distinction between an object's attributes view, which focuses on whether a product's environmental claims align with its features, and the process attribute view, which examines whether the firm's environmental efforts match its promotional efforts.
Types of greenwashing
Greenwashing can take different forms, which change depending on where and how the environmental misconduct or environmental claim occurs within an organization or its supply chain. These types change how stakeholders blame, judge, and decide whether to support or even invest in a firm.The first type is direct greenwashing, which occurs when a firm's own processes are inconsistent with its environmental claims and lead to blaming the entire company and having low intention to invest.
The second type is indirect greenwashing, which happens when a supplier makes false environmental claims, thus the company it supplies is also negatively impacted and is blamed even though the company itself did not commit any misconduct.
The third type is vicarious greenwashing, which occurs when a “green” company partners with a non-environmentally friendly supplier. In this case the company is held liable for the supplier's misconduct because of its stated commitment to sustainability.
Additionally, some scholars argue that the more internal and intentional the greenwashing, the more blame and less investment the company receives.
Greenwashing can also take different forms depending on whether it is on a firm-level or a product-level.
“Product-level greenwashing” mainly focuses on the products or services provided by the company. On this level, “claim greenwashing” occurs when there is a use of misleading statements about the environmental benefits and vague, unverified, and false certifications such as “eco-friendly”. Moreover, "executional greenwashing” happens when companies rely on visuals and symbols, such as green colors and nature imagery, that connect to sustainability and mislead consumers into believing that a product is more ecological than it is. These tactics, which are also known as the “sins of greenwashing”, tend to hide the negative impacts and diminish the consumer trust.
On the other hand, “firm-level greenwashing” happens at the organizational level, for example when a firm uses advertising and campaigns to promote sustainability white still having operations that damage the environment. This misleads the reputation and image of corporate responsibility, which confuses consumers through both words and imagery, leading to marketing deception on authentic environmental efforts.
More generally, and in the physical world, the term "beauty strip" is use pejoratively to describe the practice of hiding unsightly logging, mining and other extractive land uses with a "beauty strip" of trees or other tall vegetation, perhaps even required by government to maintain community aesthetics.
History
The origins of greenwashing can be traced to several different moments. For example, Keep America Beautiful was a campaign founded by beverage manufacturers and others in 1953. The campaign focused on recycling and littering, diverting attention away from corporate responsibility to protect the environment. The objective was to forestall the regulation of disposable containers, such as the one established by Vermont.In the mid-1960s, the environmental movement gained momentum, particularly after the publication of the landmark Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The book marked a turning point in environmental awareness and inspired citizen action. It prompted many companies to seek a new, cleaner or greener image through advertising, although others, like E. Bruce Harrison, known as the father of modern greenwashing, sought to defame Carson and disparage the message of her book. Jerry Mander, a former Madison Avenue advertising executive, called this new form of advertising "ecopornography."
The first Earth Day was held on 22 April 1970. Most companies did not actively participate in the initial Earth Day events because environmental issues were not a major corporate priority, and there was a sense of skepticism or resistance to the movement's message. Nevertheless, some industries began to advertise themselves as environmentally friendly. For example, public utilities were estimated to have spent around $300 million advertising themselves as clean and green companies, which was eight times what they spent on pollution reduction research.
The term "greenwashing" was coined by New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld in a 1986 essay about the hotel industry's hypocritical practice of placing notices in bedrooms promoting the reuse of towels to "save the environment". He noted that these institutions often made little or no effort toward reducing energy waste, although towel reuse saved them laundry costs. He concluded that the fundamental objective was most frequently increased profit. He labeled this and other profitable-but-ineffective "environmentally-conscientious" acts as "greenwashing", introducing properly the term as the act of a company appearing more environmentally friendly than it actually is, often through selective disclosure, misleading advertising, or exaggerated claims.
In 1991, a study published in the "Journal of Public Policy and Marketing" found that 58% of environmental ads had at least one deceptive claim. Another study found that 77% of people said a company's environmental reputation affected whether they would buy its products. One-fourth of all household products marketed around Earth Day advertised themselves as being green and environmentally friendly. In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission created the "Green Guidelines", which defined terms used in environmental marketing. The following year, the FTC ruled that the Nuclear Energy Institute's claims of environmental cleanliness were invalid. However, the FTC took no action regarding the ads because they fell outside the agency's jurisdiction. This caused the FTC to realize they needed new, clear, enforceable standards. In 1999, the word "greenwashing" was added to the "Oxford English Dictionary."
Days before the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Greenpeace released The Greenpeace Book on Greenwash, which described the corporate takeover of the UN conference and provided case studies of the contrast between corporate polluters and their rhetoric. Third World Network published an expanded version of that report, "Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism", in 1996.
In 2002, during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the Greenwashing Academy hosted the Greenwash Academy Awards. The ceremony awarded companies like BP, ExxonMobil, and even the U.S. Government for their elaborate greenwashing ads and support for greenwashing. A 2020 European Union study found that over 50% of examined environmental claims in the EU were vague, misleading, or unfounded, while 40% of them were unsubstantiated.
Many companies have committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to net zero after the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. A net zero emissions level means that any emissions given off by a company would be offset by carbon sequestrators in the natural world. However, companies are not actually cutting emissions, but are creating unfeasible plans and attempting to improve other things rather than their emissions. Therefore, most companies are not actually upholding their agreements and ultimately continue not to cause any positive change.