Greenwashing

Greenwashing is a term used to describe businesses, organizations, and individuals who exaggerate or make false claims about the environmental benefits of their products and services. In short, greenwashing is an unjustified claim of environmental virtue. While such accusations are now widespread, qualifying to what degree communications have intentionally distorted environmental harm or benefit can be difficult, especially when judgments are often subject to interpretation. This can include accusations of greenwashing against those who have taken action to improve environmental performance, but are perceived to have not done enough. These difficulties may have delayed legislation on greenwashing issues, although both public and private governance is now emerging.

There are several different forms of greenwashing, including providing false information about environmental attributes, exaggerated claims of sustainability, taking credit for environmental improvements mandated by outside influences, and deceptive claims based on inappropriate comparisons to outdated technologies.

According to some, greenwashing has been confined to instances where environmental claims have not actually been false, but have failed to present the entire environmental picture. However, recent research has uncovered a category of greenwashing where claims of environmental credibility were adjudged to be false and deceitful. These examples vary from claims that certain products have certification from recognized independent bodies when they did not (for example, shampoos that claimed to be “certified organic”), to those where marketing overrepresented the environmental advantages of a given characteristic. A number of these [Page 305]cases have been highlighted in the car industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Suzuki GB released direct mail marketing stating that cars have “great green credentials” and are “guilt-free,” featuring graphics of butterflies, blue skies, flowers, and a rainbow. The UK government's Advertising Standards Agency felt that although the advertising implied that the car caused little or no harm to the environment, this fact was not substantively justifiable. In a similar case, the Norwegian government has banned companies from claiming that any vehicle is “green,” “clean,” or “environmentally friendly.”

Some would argue that this Poland Spring company web page is an example of greenwashing. The company touts an improved “ecoshaped” bottle with a smaller paper label to contribute less volume to the waste stream. Nevertheless, an estimated 80 percent of all bottled-water containers still end up in landfills

Source:http://polandspring.com

The growing realization that being “green” can be profitable for a business leads to a second form of greenwashing: exaggerating a product or service's sustain-ability or green features. Many companies have started to identify, after the fact, features of current products as being environmentally sound while no fundamental or physical change has been made. A sub-category of this type of greenwashing occurs when a company touts that changes to a product or process were environmentally motivated, when they were in fact motivated by financial gain. For example, in what many believe to be the first use of the term greenwashing, Jay Westerveld noted that hoteliers’ requests for customers to reuse their towels and linens were not motivated out of concern for the environment as they claimed, but out of the desire to cut costs and increase profits. Indeed, this type of activity has been noticeably widespread, as companies have rolled out new “green” programs for energy and material inputs, packaging, and logistics that in fact save them money.

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