post 28 greenwashing and red herrings

GREENWASHING and RED HERRINGS

How often, when we buy stuff, do we see
Misleading claims for their green probity
From rigged and crafty car emissions tests
To adverts claiming using plastic less

Those labels on so much of what we buy
Are carefully disguised to hide the lie
That goods are not as green as they appear
Red herringed to allay consumer fear

The profit lines are still the main concerns
Of companies who fiddle while ‘Rome burns’
Diverting us with adverts of half truths
That say their goods are green and fit for use

From oil or gas, from food to clothes and trees
From offset waste that’s ‘processed’ overseas
From banks that fund polluting industries
Greenwashing tells the fibs with practiced ease

When looked for, you can find in every sphere
The obfuscating claims that are not clear
Irrelevance and vagueness fill the space
Where truthful facts should have their proper place

I wonder how many of us are aware of the disturbing increase, especially among big business, of the monetising of tackling climate change. The ‘credits’ that can be earned or claimed from ‘Greenwashing’ are a growing trend, as companies become alive to the possibilities of cashing in on these new moneymaking schemes.

Again, if big business was genuinely committed to helping the planet revitalise itself, and not focused on the ‘profit’ factor of carbon offset, I would be cheering them on. But the bottom line of the balance sheet still rules. Examples of this trend are everywhere.

Here are just a few; mainly sourced from akepa, a sustainable marketing agency, that highlights firms committed to ethical principals; and exposes those who aren’t.

Banks talk the big talk about combating climate change, but still lend enormous sums to industries contributing to global warming (fossil fuels and deforestation) while boasting that they are ‘leaders’ in the green transition.

Fast fashion likes us to think that they are committed to reusing or recycling discarded textiles; but only 20% of these get recycled. The other 80% goes to landfill; and is usually dumped in developing countries.

Ikea, a company that has often shouted loud it’s green credentials, has actually been found out to be using wood sourced from illegal logging, in Sweden and the Ukraine.

Car firms, such as Volkswagen, cheated with emission claims, by fitting devices that could detect and alter performance to reduce their emissions level; claiming to be low emission and eco friendly. In fact the actual emissions were exposed as being up to 40 times over the allowed limit for nitrogen oxide pollution.

There is a plastic packaging claim by an international company, making cleaning and other related products, that their packaging is sourced from ‘100% Ocean Plastic’, conjuring up visions of dedicated crews clearing the seas of our plastic waste. But no; this plastic is actually retrieved from plastic ‘banks’ in Indonesia, the Philippines and Haiti; and is labelled such, because it did NOT end up in the ocean!

Companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi and Nestle, regularly trumpet their ‘ambitions’ to become 100% recyclable of single use plastic, without any clear target statements as to how they are going to achieve this. Coca Cola gave the excuse for not abandoning single use plastic bottles, because ‘they were popular with the public’; a clear example of shifting the blame onto their customers. In June 2021, Earth Island Institute filed a lawsuit against Coca Cola for false claims of sustainability and eco friendly single use plastic, despite being the proven largest plastic (single use) polluter in the world. And plastic bottled water labels regularly feature the words ‘nature’ and ‘natural’; again, when single use is the main contributor to the massive plastic waste crisis.

Another plastic ‘greenwashing’ story is about Starbucks, who advertised in 2018 that they were replacing their old straw and combination lids with a new ‘strawless’ lid, which contained more plastic than the old lids; but their excuse for this was that the plastic used, polypropylene, was recyclable; ignoring the fact that only 9% of the world’s waste plastic gets recycled. The US, for example, exports a third of their recycling to developing countries.

And the moral of that last story is, just because a product is labelled as ‘recyclable’ doesn’t mean that it will be!