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Think about your last trip to the grocery store the mall or the drugstore. Perhaps you hopped in your Ford Escape hybrid, Toyota Prius or your new, nearly-30-mile-per-gallon Honda. Maybe when you reached your destination, you loaded up on organic tomatoes and broccoli at Whole Foods, or chose the organic produce option at Wal-Mart. Then, a quick stop at the drugstore to pick up a bottle of Herbal Essences Organic Experience shampoo which is totally all-natural, and the bottle uses 25 percent postconsumer materials. Perhaps you bought a set of those organic cotton sheets from Linens ’N Things.
On the surface this might seem like a shopping trip straight out of environmental awareness heaven but there’s more here than meets the eye. You might think you’re contributing to a growing global green movement by purchasing these products, but you’re really only getting half the story. The same car company that manufactures the Escape hybrid also makes the Expedition, which, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2002 model-year fuel-efficiency report, gets an average of 14 miles per gallon (mpg). That report, available at www.fueleconomy.gov, states that in terms of emissions and air pollution, the Ford Expedition ranks as one of the worst contributors to low air quality. And Toyota, maker of the hybrid Prius, also manufactures the Expedition-size Land Cruiser and the hulking Sequoia, which both also average 14 mpg. That bottle of Herbal Essences contains chemicals like sodium laurel sulfate and propylene glycol, which, last we checked, weren’t organic. The organic produce you pick up in the middle of winter actually hails from California or South America and, while there are stringent standards in place to ensure that these veggies are organic, they have to be shipped, trucked or flown in from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles away—creating a sizeable carbon footprint. So what’s really going on here? Unfortunately, like millions of other Americans, you’ve been greenwashed.
What Is Greenwashing, Exactly?
Although the term has been around for a couple of decades, it’s just now beginning to make its way into the American vocabulary and into some dictionaries. According to John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, “It derives from the term ‘whitewashing,’ but what it refers to is the marketing practice of a company, an individual, sometimes a politician, to make themselves look environmentally responsible.” Quite simply, it’s the practice of pretending to be more environmentally conscious and environmentally appropriate than you actually are. And while this may come as a shock, it’s by no means uncommon. “Consumers really rely on the integrity of the companies they deal with to tell them what and how they are doing,” says Shel Horowitz, an independent marketing consultant and author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First (Accurate Writing and More, 2003). According to Stauber, many corporations simply turn on one of their most powerful weapons—in-house marketing and public relations departments dedicated to “greenwashing” a company’s image. “[Corporations] bring in PR and advertising specialists and put together a campaign that will reach tens of thousands of people. It has a simple message: The company is very, very, very concerned about the environment,” Stauber says.
And these campaigns are often incredibly successful because the amount of manpower, money and time a corporation can spend on such an advertising campaign is formidable. “They can accompany those efforts with sophisticated marketing and actually track the extent to which they are changing public opinion,” Stauber says. “Big corporations or industries that may be environmentally irresponsible and whose lobbyists might be working to curtail, restrain or lift environmental regulations can nevertheless put an unlimited amount of money into advertising and PR that reaches a huge audience and convinces them that [the company is] actually pro-environment.”
Why They Do It
The American public’s increased awareness of environmental issues has made a green image more important to corporations. “In the last year or year and a half, I’d say the global climate crisis has finally penetrated into the consciousness of the average American,” Horowitz says. And it’s pretty ironic that it’s taken so long to really register, considering that the U.S. hosted the first Earth Day in 1970 and had been a leader in the worldwide environmental movement until the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration allowed mass deregulation of environmental laws and a very pro-business ethos was ushered in that still remains today. So while the corporations rake in record profits, the American public has lagged behind on issues of global climate change, energy efficiency, food and resource issues and health and consumer safety,
But now, as people wake up and realize the impact they’re having on the environment, the pressure on corporations and big business to change also increases. “Companies make claims that their products are better for the environment or better for consumer health and safety because they know that’s what people want,” Stauber says. And a corporation that’s not at least perceived as being a “good citizen” is likely to lose business.
And that’s where greenwashing comes in. Many corporations find that greenwashing only one product or service can significantly change their public image and make them more palatable to consumers, regardless of their actual practices—without the considerable cost of revamping its whole product line. This type of green marketing is most prevalent in the automobile and energy industries, although it can happen anywhere.
The energy industry is another major offender. General Electric, British Petroleum (BP), Shell Oil and Exxon all come to mind. “You can look at BP, the big gas company, which they want you to think stands for Beyond Petroleum, and their nice green gas stations,” Stauber says. [They want you to know that] they’ve given money to World Wildlife Fund and see their really serious, earnest commercials raising issues of global climate change. They actually sell solar panels too; I own some of their solar panels. Of course, they would much rather be thought of as the petroleum company who invests in solar panels than the largest single [pipeline] leaseholder in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or the largest single leaseholder in the Gulf of Mexico. And they certainly don’t want people to think of how exactly a year ago in Alaska, they so neglected their pipeline that it corroded and leaked oil over the tundra. When push comes to shove, BP is still a very big, dirty, polluting oil company and not an environmental savior,” he says. The same is true for one of the largest greenwashers, the nuclear power industry. “A classic example is the nuclear power industry, which likes to paint itself as very green and in fact is extremely environmentally disruptive,” Horowitz says. “[Nuclear energy] is cleaner than coal if you measure smokestack emissions, but when you start to deal with the implications of radioactive mine tailing, the inability to store the waste in a meaningful way for the thousands of years necessary, the safety risks of pollution in the event the containment vessel is breached, it starts to look like a very unclean alternative,” he says.
Offenders Everywhere
Mass retail and food production are also being pressured by consumers to change their ways. “In the next 20 or 30 years there are going to be a lot of issues involving water use,” Horowitz says. “The impact of a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi bottling plant that is taking water from a local supply and bottling it as bottled water or making it into soda is enormous,” he says.
Another culprit is the much-maligned Wal-Mart. From its labor practices to its stance on reproductive rights to its environmental impact, Wal-Mart has come under fire by various governmental and nonprofit watchdog groups. And the company is using some proven greenwashing tactics to try to change its public image by offering some organic products while incorporating environmentally friendly building materials and practices into many of its stores. While these may be seen as positives, the real motivation here is the bottom line. “[Wal-Mart] will increase their profits from people who want to shop at a green merchant,” Horowitz says. And by building more efficient, greener stores, the company saves so much on utility bills that the marketing benefit becomes secondary.
“Any industry that has a problem with pollution or is engaged in what are called the extractive industries—mining, logging, drilling for oil—that has an impact on natural resources” can be a greenwasher, Stauber says. “And any industry whose products are used by consumers—food products, cosmetics—that might contain chemicals, additives, coloring agents,” he says.
Get Oriented
Of course, all this aside, behind all the washing there’s still a hint of green. As the global market economy slowly changes, companies will be forced to change, too. But what can you do now, today, to make sure the products and services you’re purchasing are as green as they can be, and to put pressure on companies to go even greener? The Internet is still your best weapon. You can put in a company name “minus” the company’s own site so that you don’t have to see the company’s propaganda. You can also enter the company name “and” environmental compliance “minus” the company’s own site. Consumer advocacy groups like Consumer’s Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, can be helpful as well as organizations like those listed in the sidebar on the previous page. Unfortunately, there’s no one-stop shop, and as of yet there aren’t any universal “green” seals of approval. So it’s really up to you to do the legwork necessary to determine the truth behind the greenwash, but, according to Stauber, “With enough pressure on corporations and industry to change, in ten to fifteen years we may not recognize our economy.” And that just might make the rest of the world green with envy.
As of press time, none of the companies mentioned in this article returned requests for comment.
Greenwashing Watchdogs
While there’s no one-stop shop that documents all the greenwashing offenders—and there are many—here are a few key resources that can help you see through false claims.
Center for Media and Democracy The CMD has been around for 14 years and the site contains some of the best investigative journalism documenting greenwashers, human rights abuses, political half-truths and other misleading public information. Check out www.prwatch.org for the latest news.
Business Ethics Pledge Begun with the intention of gathering 25,000 signatures, the pledge is gathering steam as companies pledge to conduct ethical, moral and environmentally and socially conscious business practices. Check out www.business-ethics-pledge.org to see who’s on it before you buy.
www.Greenwashing.net This great resource for up-to-date news on the latest greenwashing tactics also prints the Ten Worst Greenwashers list put out by Earth Day Resources for Living Green, a watchdog group.
www.CorpWatch.org This site keeps tabs on corporations, categorizing them by issue. Topics, issues and the corporations covered are all updated regularly.
Not the Real News
In January 2006, Siemens AG, a German-based worldwide engineering corporation that supplies process automation technology to two-thirds of U.S. ethanol plants, released a two-minute video news release (VNR) created to look and seem like a news feature. It optimistically discussed—with a corn farmer, an ethanol plant builder and two energy industry experts—the benefits of using ethanol as an alternative fuel. On the surface, it looked and sounded just like any other short news brief on the five stations on which it aired. The problem was, the entire thing was a phony.
The problem here isn’t so much that the information Siemens provided was wrong, but that there was no open debate, and no original reporting by any of the stations that aired the piece. This leaves consumers with only half the story. Siemens’ reasons for getting people to believe its claims are a big-money proposition. If the public pushing for more production and more plants not only would Siemens receive lucrative power technology contracts but also government business subsidies to do so, since the company is supporting an “alternative fuel.”
VNRs are becoming more common as multinational corporations put their massive public relations and advertising departments to work convincing Americans that they are doing the best they can for the planet and for consumers worse yet, there’s not much a consumer can do if he or she discovers the deception. Because the public relations industry is almost completely unregulated, a company can make broad claims about a product being environmentally greener, cleaner and/or more natural without the need to prove those claims. “If a company wants to put out a press release or pay money to a third-party expert who will make environmental claims on behalf of the company or the product, those techniques can be filled with half-truths and be very misleading, and [the company] can get away with that,” says John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy.
So how can you avoid being duped the next time a VNR pops up on your screen? Be wary of overly optimistic stories that only present one point of view. Proper journalistic standards dictate that a reporter must simply report the story from both sides, without inserting his or her own bias. If the story sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.
Watch the Siemens VNR at www.prwatch.org/fakenews/vnr16
