Greenwashing—It’s Like Whitewashing, Only Worse

Published by Martha Danly

Thirsty Hummer Strolling down Aisle 6 at my local MegaMart, I plop a container of laundry detergent into my cart. The product label reads “biodegradable”— looks good to me. La-di-da! What do I know?

I see a TV commercial with a lot of busy Americans working hard to get our economy going again. The voiceover says, “with jobs powered by affordable energy…by our most abundant fuel…the source of more than half our electricity. Coal: it is America’s power.” The ad is sponsored by cleancoal.org. I’m thinking: clean coal…really?

This is classic greenwashing. We’re surrounded by it. And it’s insidious.

Worse than whitewashing, which uses spin to mask a piece of bad news, greenwashing attempts to tell us that some product, company, or industry is actually good for the environment and for us when, in reality, it isn’t. For consumers trying to make greener choices, greenwashing works to lull us into a false sense of security with vague labels, feel-good claims, and in some cases, outright lies and mendacity.

We all have our favorite example. Mine is a print ad for Nestlé Pure Life bottled water that claims:

“Most water bottles avoid landfill sites and are recycled.” Not true; fewer than a quarter of all bottles manufactured are recycled.
“Bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world.” What? This is patently absurd.
“Nestlé Pure Life is a healthy, eco-friendly choice.” Truth is, your tap water beats it by a country mile.

Colleagues have shared some of their favorite greenwash goblins, including:

The Shell Oil ad that advises us, “Don’t throw anything away. There is no away.” To make the message even more compelling, it features colorful flowers flowing out of smokestacks.
Palmolive Eco dishwashing soap may have no phosphates but it does contain chlorine, which poses health risks. The kicker is that the product stinks at washing dishes.
Then there’s the paint company that claims their toxic paint is green because the label on the outside of the can is printed on recycled paper.
Or the wallcovering business that sends samples in the mail, saying the company is green because they recycle all of their office paper; yet the samples that they send around are unrecyclable!

How dumb do they think we are? Sadly, these greenwashers are in deep denial on many levels, and their hubris is getting in the way.

Well, enough kvetching!

Clean Coal Fortunately for us, we have plenty of firepower to fight back: to name only a few, there are environmental watchdogs like Greenpeace, environmental partnerships like The Reality Coalition, environmental marketing firms like TerraChoice, websites like Greenwashing Index, and consumer advocacy organizations like Consumer Reports. They’re all helping to shift the public focus from outrage, confusion, and naiveté to understanding and action.

We hope.

Greenpeace has a site, StopGreenwash.org, that is dedicated to squashing greenwashing, going after misrepresentations by heavy hitters such as GM, Kimberly-Clark, Chevron, and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). StopGreenwash.org provides details of the campaigns and gets users involved by allowing them to vote on print and video ads.

The Reality Coalition is taking on ACCCE, promoters of “clean coal,” with its own advertising and PR campaigns aimed at neutralizing the ACCCE’s massive disinformation. To tell the truth about clean coal, The Reality Coalition has produced a series of ads directed by the Coen brothers, spoofing the whole idea of clean coal. No little canary in a coal mine, the Reality Coalition is a project of several leading environmental organizations, among them the Alliance for Climate Protection, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters.

TerraChoice recently published its Greenwashing Report 2009, which details the Seven Sins of Greenwashing. Rather than target offending ads and companies individually, TerraChoice generalizes the problem of greenwashing into seven sins — a strategy that has the advantage of creating a memorable way to talk about the range of greenwashing techniques and promoting the development of consumers’ critical eye so that they themselves can spot the next one independently of watchdog organizations.

THE SEVEN SINS OF GREENWASHING

Green Jewels

Sin of the Hidden Trade-off (“it’s made of paper, so it must be good”)
Sin of No Proof (no evidence to support a claim of “x% post consumer recycled content”)
Sin of Vagueness (“all-natural” could include arsenic, which is naturally occurring)
Sin of Worshipping False Labels (gives the impression of third-party endorsement with a fake seal of approval)
Sin of Irrelevance (“CFC-free”, when CFCs are already banned by law)
Sin of Lesser of Two Evils (focusing on a relatively insignificant benefit, such “fuel-efficient SUV”)
Sin of Fibbing (claiming that a product is EnergyStar certified when it isn’t)

You won’t be surprised to learn that the number of self-identified “green” products increased by 79% since the 2007 study. But what may raise your eyebrows is that fewer than 2 percent of the 2,219 products claiming to green in the United States and Canada were found to be completely Sin-free. Too bad the data are not transparent, given TerraChoice’s commitment to reporting without brand-identifying the products — though it is evident how the impact lands and retains clients. Maybe that counts as a venial sin of their own accounting.

The good news is that while virtually no products were greenwash-free, TerraChoice found legitimate eco-labeling to be almost twice as common in the 2009 study (23% of products) as it was in the 2007 research (14% of products).

The Greenwashing Index, promoted by EnviroMedia Social Marketing and the University of Oregon, solicits ads across the greenwashing spectrum from authentic to bogus. With more than 200 ads posted there, one can view the good, the bad, and the ugly, including role models for good ads. As on the Greenpeace site, users can upload and rate ads.

Greener Choices, the eco-wing of Consumer Reports, manages the Eco-labels Center, where one may find the meaning — or lack thereof — of content on labels for food, household cleaners, personal hygiene, and wood/paper. You can search by label (“biodegradable”), product category (“food”), certifying organization (“Forest Stewardship Council”) or program (“Seafood Safe”) and get the skinny on a range of familiar terms.

Cotton Just as you’d expect from Consumer Reports, they drill down on each eco-label, asking and answering:

How meaningful is the label?
Is the label verified?
Is the meaning of the label consistent?
Are the label standards available to the public?
Is information about the organization available to the public?
Is the organization free from conflict of interest?
Was the label developed with broad public and industry input?

Having worked with Marin Sun Farms, a local grass-fed beef producer, I was already aware of the confusion over labels like organic, natural, and grass-fed when it comes to beef. For beef producers who raise and sell the real deal, it can be very challenging to educate consumers and increase market share when there are larger producers who can use the same terms for a product that is far inferior to your own.

Multiply this confusion and doubt by every category in your life and you get the idea. The Eco-labels Center lists 69 different certification programs, and that doesn’t even cover building materials, appliances, and other important categories. I yearn for the days of the simple Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Let’s face it, being green is complicated. The term green is easy to invoke and has positive associations, but semantically and analytically, it’s a son of a bitch.

What makes something green is different for every category of product and activity — from cleaning products, to vacations, hot water heaters, bath towels, home energy, and transportation. While this may all have something in common at an abstract level (say, a lifecycle analysis of sustainability), the nits and grits are hard to distill into a single format like a nutrition label. For example, bamboo flooring isn’t automatically green. Although it’s made from a rapidly renewable resource, it may or may not have been grown using sustainable methods and/or processed with urea formaldehyde (that would be Sin #1: the hidden trade-off).

Green Water Bottles Just as different categories need different benchmarks of their greenness, there are often many standards that apply to a given product category. Take, for example, flooring. There are five types of certifications listed on FindAnyFloor.com:

Green Seal Certification (which uses ISO standards)
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification
EcoLogo Certification
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification
Carpet and Rug Institute’s (CRI) Green Label and Green Label Plus Certifications

As they say in the computer industry: “Standards are great — there are so many to choose from!”

Green standards constitute a major step forward towards a solution, but they’re not a panacea. In the end, the remedies against greenwashing include several actions. From the top-down, they include the development of meaningful, practical eco-standards (not too many, please), coupled with effective enforcement. From the bottom-up, they include the public’s questioning of what they see and hear, speaking out against greenwashing, and putting their money where their mouth is — offering carrots to Truthtellers and sticks to BS-ers.

I suspect that greenwashing is like the recession — it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

Green By Design has a lot more to share on greenwashing, human behavior, and the need for effective standards. But before we move on, tell us: what’s your experience with greenwashing? What sticks in your craw? Got an ad you love to hate? Share with us!

19 Responses to “Greenwashing—It’s Like Whitewashing, Only Worse”

jill trear says:

April 25, 2009 at 2:22 pm

Thank you so much for this article. “Green” can be exhausting and sometimes you have to dig deeply to find out who actually owns a company to discover that supporting that company is objectionable when the product may not be. I will save the links so I can continue my education in being a responsible and aware consumer. Jill

Reply
Helene says:

April 25, 2009 at 2:59 pm

excellent article with great resources! – i’ve been looking for good resources where consumers could easily find information – I think the best way to fight this is to raise awareness among consumers about the importance of educating themselves about what they buy

Reply
Ellen Serber says:

April 25, 2009 at 11:14 pm

Well done, Martha. Your take on greenwashing reminds me of my feelings about Yoga ads which promise nirvana in two weeks and $2,000. What we are really facing is the inability to question information and to think independently.

Reply
brenda says:

April 28, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Hmmm, just like the sugar I used today for baking which promised it was “fat free and cholesterol free” – so it must be healthy, right?

Reply
Jennifer Kaplan says:

April 28, 2009 at 12:26 pm

Recently I wrote a post on ecopreneurist.com (http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/12/15/lessons-from-the-greenwash-police/) about Nestle Waters’ greenwashing and a letter from their Director of Communications and the bottled water association (!) saying I was anti-American for questioning them. It was unbelievable. Just this weekend I was talking to the ED of a large clean energy association who was bemoaning the fact that “clean coal” and “clean oil” spend $200 million a year on advertising and advocacy and the real clean energy advocates have only a couple million to spend. With a spending ratio like that its not hard to guess which messages are going to be more visible. It is really a shame that the greenwashers get away with it and, at a minimum the journalists and the public at large don’t call them on it.

Reply
Martha says:

April 28, 2009 at 1:11 pm

Brenda, you’re exactly right. Marketing sugar as “fat free and cholesterol free” is a perfect example of Sin #6: The Sin of Irrelevance.

What I want to know is what are you baking and can I have some? Enjoy!

Reply
brenda says:

April 28, 2009 at 1:16 pm

Frosting for gingerbread houses. Yes, it’s not Christmas, but it’s for the local grange where we have open house, and there’s nothing kids like better than candy They make their own gingerbread house from graham crackers with recycled milk cartons as the base.

Reply
John Zito says:

April 28, 2009 at 1:34 pm

The Nestle example hits particularly close to home: Nestle pumps close to a million gallons daily (depending on who’s stats you read). This link from Alternet.Org gives an overview of what goes on in communities that Nestle pumps from. http://bit.ly/FZ1WY

Also, as a “green” home builder, I can’t buy a product that’s not “green” I called myself a “green” builder for a year about 10 years ago when no one cared, then just called it efficiency building–energy and resources. I’m back to saying I’m green for SEO purposes, but when it’s one on one, I don’t use the term. I also point out where we’re not being green. Let’s face it, an extra $10k for a product does not make a home green.

Reply
Sharon in SF says:

April 28, 2009 at 2:25 pm

I have an example of a highly lauded LEED certified building on my block that meets narrow standards but is a total disaster on other fronts. The building is a new San Francisco City College campus that supports technical classes; it uses environmentally sound materials and is close to mass transit so almost 100% of its student population bikes/busses in. However, they have a poorly sized and poorly designed air circulation and cooling system that is wasteful, makes a horrendous noise, and prevents less energy-intensive cooling, despite its LEED pedigree. 1) the units lose 60% of the system’s water use due to poor design. 2)The huge condenser units on the roof, bigger than any of the neighboring residences, makes a noise like there is a vacuum cleaner running constantly all day in your room, which we neighbors have been fighting for over 2 years. 3) The system needs to be on 24-7 because of air circulation regulations; apparently, the building is so “green” that they are not allowed to use the old-fashioned method of opening windows to modulate air temperature – the LEED building code mandates that they use a device, for (ironically) noise reduction in the classroom. 4) The system was chosen even though it was inappropriate, because the local utility offered a rebate for anyone who bought and installed one, whether it was a good fit or not. 5) And finally, they made the poor choice of housing all their server farms in the building, with terrible security and in closets which overheat more than a well-designed green datacenter… Hence the coolers and fans need to run constantly in a desperate attempt to keep the computers cool.

But, we have little recourse to address the human impact like noise issues, because the building passed its LEED commissioning with flying colors!

Reply
John Zito says:

April 28, 2009 at 9:45 pm

Great post, Jennifer. I remember in the late 70’s when Perrier (now owned by Nestle) ramped up it’s marketing efforts in the U.S. Most thought it was a fad that would go the way of pet rocks–selling water? Some responses to your posts were interesting. Regarding costs to get the water to the tap are high–but most of it’s use once it’s there isn’t for drinking–it’s for flushing toilets, watering lawns and bathing.

Reply
Erik van Erne, Milieunet Foundation says:

April 29, 2009 at 12:22 am

Great post. Did you hear about the great Landrover Greenwash act?

There cars are produced totally climate neutral and you can drive 75.000 km climate neutral for free.

Does anybody know what they mean with climate neutral. I guess not. In my opinion it should mean: totally no impact in a negative way on our climate.

That’s an illusion, a joke, a nice greenwash act.

http://www.stichtingmilieunet.nl/andersbekekenblog/?p=7438

Reply
Chris K says:

April 30, 2009 at 10:36 pm

I love the picture of Fiji water at the end. Fiji has to be most green-washed product out there. The water is shipped from halfway across the world and to produce it they power the bottling plant with DIESEL generators!

In fact, don’t drink bottled water at all. Buy yourself a good water bottle.

Reply
Kris says:

May 13, 2009 at 3:34 pm

I agree with most of your points, but I must take umbrage with this one:

“Nestlé Pure Life is a healthy, eco-friendly choice.” Truth is, your tap water beats it by a country mile.

The “truth” in your assessment is actually just your opinion, unless you have empirical evidence that proves that the product is, in fact, no healthier than tap water.

No, I don’t work for Nestle or any of its affiliates.

Reply
Wendy Cobrda says:

June 10, 2009 at 4:39 pm

Hello Martha,

First of all, I enjoy reading your posts. And, I agree wholeheartedly that some companies stretch the “truth” too far to make a product seem more eco-friendly than it is. No argument there. There are always people who don’t know when to stop the spin.

My issue is really with what I call “greenbashing” — the consistently harsh critiques hurled at companies who are trying to make a difference. No matter what they do, they get blasted for not doing enough.

As our friend Joel Makower likes to say “If a cannibal eats with a fork and knife, is that enough?”

We have a long way to go before all products are measured against a standard set of criteria. In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to encourage companies that are making efforts to be sustainable — that is it, staying in business while making changes to existing products and processes to be more efficient and having little/no effect on our resources.

Many companies we talk to don’t tell their eco-stories for fear of being lambasted by those who have decided to elect themselves as the green police.

Indeed, it’s complicated. And, even though this is going to sound like blasphemy — I think that the biggest problem is that so many claims indeed are “greener” if the claim is put in perspective. Oversimplification contributes to public skepticism.

Bottled water is something that’s so easy to bash. A natural resource, dumped in plastic and shipped for convenience? How awful for all the reasons we all know.

But compared to what? Soda? Milk? We can debate the merits of sugar processing, methane from cows, etc. At the end of the day, water in a bottle is a natural resource and it is a conveniently healthy way to keep hydrated when you don’t have an easy way to get to a fountain or faucet. Is it the best choice? It all depends on the situation. He who hasn’t consumed water out of a bottle or used a plastic grocery bag may certainly cast the first stone. But for the rest of us mortals, each day, our choices are closely linked to where we are and what is available at the time. Sure, I’d love to carry cool, clean water with me in a reusable container all the time. But sometimes, it isn’t practical. (Like, oh, when I’m trying to get on an airplane.) And I sure love having an option to buy water when I need it.

Unfortunately, by bashing companies that are making efforts (no matter how insignificant they may seem to some) — we are creating an environment where people are so conditioned to look for the catch that they throw their hands up and ignore all the good along with the bad.

Think of it this way. Pretend you are training for your first marathon. When you meet your coach — you’re told that it takes time to train your body to run long distances. How would you feel if next time you showed up for training and your coach yelled at you because you couldn’t go more than 1/4 mile without stopping? Would you be encouraged to continue? Would you give up?

We need to celebrate the successes and create a culture where “green” becomes colorless — where sustainable practices become part of doing business. We’re not going to get there by tearing to shreds those who are willing to take small steps towards a greater good.

I don’t claim to know where the line should be drawn — as you said “it’s complicated” — but I believe more change comes from a feeling of being celebrated for ones efforts, not demonized.

Just my 2 cents.

Wendy

Reply
Helene says:

June 10, 2009 at 5:43 pm

A good two cents Wendy! I agree that there is at times too much bashing and this is not a helpful thing (you know the whole honey/vinegar thing). I do think however that the focus needs to be more on the importance and need for consumers to become educated about the products they purchase and the companies behind them. The days of sitting back and believing everything we are told are over. This way consumers’ purchasing power can be used for good instead of evil

Reply
Living in a Chemical Soup Podcast says:

June 10, 2009 at 6:52 pm

I really enjoyed your article and tips on how to avoid greenwashing. In the water ad you pointed out, I just found myself laughing inside. Sometimes, the claims are so outrageous, they’re laughable.

Reply
John Black says:

June 11, 2009 at 4:11 am

As a former ad guy now trying to improve the world one garden at a time, I see that even the landscaping industry isn’t immune from greenwashing. Nurseries devote tons of water, energy & chemicals to cultivating “xeriscape” plants, which then are potted in plastic and trucked around the continent. Polymer crystals that absorb water then release it over time sound like real planet-savers – until we realize we’re lacing our soils with plastic. And don’t get me started on the endless parade of gadgets and accessories we’re told we “need” to grow bigger tomatoes in less time with less water. Folks need to get the big picture – everything matters, and just being “green” isn’t enough.

Reply
davakins says:

July 4, 2009 at 11:32 am

Good article. Bottled water should be heavily taxed due to its environmental impact. I encourage people to take all of the plastic bottles that they find and return them to the responsible parties (distributors) and dump them on their lawn.

Reply
Rhett says:

August 11, 2009 at 5:21 pm

I think we are making a difference by sharing all of this knowledge. As people become aware they make changes. I heard about toxic water bottles and now I look at everything that is plastic for that little number on the bottom. I did not even know it was there until I read about it on a web site. Thanks for the great post. Knowledge then change.
Rhett out.

Reply