How to Avoid Greenwashing in 4 Steps
4 steps to avoiding greenwashing
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Eco-friendliness is hot right now. It’s in. It’s hip and cool, even. But – because corporations know that consumers increasingly demand environmentally friendly products – they often tout misleading claims to sound more eco-friendly than they actually are. It’s called greenwashing, and we are getting duped by innuendos, imagery and outright lies every single day. So how do we avoid greenwashed products?
Many consumers believe greenwashing has to be explicit to earn the greenwashing label. Remember the 2015 Volkswagen scandal? When 11 million diesel-burning cars worldwide were fitted with defeat devices that could detect when they were being tested and change emissions performance accordingly?
Blatant and illegal greenwashing happening there, clearly.
But greenwashing can be sneaky, too. Read on for the updated definition of greenwashing that highlights its implicit nature as well as 4 tips on how to avoid greenwashing for good.
First things first: What’s greenwashing?
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– Greenwashing occurs when company spends more time and money claiming to be green than actually implementing business and manufacturing practices that minimize environmental impact.
– Greenwashing is a marketing ploy that promotes the perception that an organization is environmentally friendly.
– The prevalence of greenwashing is growing. As consumers increasingly demand eco-friendly products, marketers use greenwashing as a means to sell more products to customers who identify as green-leaning.
– Greenwashing is all about profit. Corporations desire to sell products; if they can sell by claiming to be green, then so be it.
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While it’s fantastic that corporations are listening to consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, we as consumers must avoid greenwashing while also demanding that companies actually incorporate sustainability into their mission statements.
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Where does the term greenwashing come from?
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Have you stayed in a hotel lately? If so, you may have noticed a placard in the bathroom urging you to reuse your towels. Reusing towels helps the hotel save water (and money); reusing towels is therefore completely sustainable, right?
Interestingly enough, these towel placards were instrumental in the coining the now-famous term, greenwashing.
The year was 1983 and environmentalist Jay Westerveld, on vacation in Somoa and Fiji, stayed in a nearby guesthouse that didn’t offer towels to guests. So Westerveld walked to the sprawling, fancy resort next door to borrow one.
That’s when Westerveld spotted “Save the Towel” placards urging customers to reuse towels to help the hotel “save Fiji’s crucial ecosystem”.
Westerveld aptly noted the irony, because this sprawling resort didn’t have a recycling program. Worse, the hotel was currently undergoing a massive expansion project.
3 years later, as Westerveld wrote a term paper on multiculturalism, he recalled the irony of the towels and wrote the sentence,
“… it all comes out in the greenwash.”
Here’s how to avoid greenwashing.
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Below are 4 tricks to spot (and avoid) greenwashed products:
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1. Say Heck No! to cutesy imagery
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The product’s package is green or mostly green in color.
There are leaves, grass, pastures, or visuals of animals frolicking in the forest.
Perhaps there are even cows grazing in green pastures.
But if the image on the product’s packaging is bucolic, it is probably greenwashed. Indeed, corporations often use nature images to appear environmental.
A great example of suggestive imagery is Huggies Pure & Natural diaper line. Green mist surrounds a smiling toddler. There are plenty of vines and leaves. The image as a whole exudes the impression that the child on the package is happy, healthy and at one with nature.
Then there’s the wording. The first bullet point on the righthand side boasts “organic cotton”. Organic cotton is the epitome of eco-friendliness, right?
Wrong.
In fact, only a teeny-tiny portion of the cotton used in Huggies Pure & Natural diapers is organic. Most of it – including the inner lining that actually rubs against a baby’s skin – is made of conventional, pesticide-laden cotton.
Despite the green mist, the leaves and the misleading wording, there’s very little that’s eco-friendly about this single-use product.
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BP energy also uses suggestive imagery to convey eco-friendliness. Their logo is a green flower, after all.
But 200 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico due to BP’s “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” in 2010. So although BP spent millions of dollars on advertising that featured BP employees cleaning oil off ducks, there’d be no environmental devastation in the first place if it weren’t for BP.
Then there’s the logo. BP’S green flower suggests it’s the most eco-friendly oil and gas company around. Hey, nothing screams environmental like a green flower!
BP attempts to fool customers based on faulty logic. BP’s competitors – who are also major players in the oil industry- are pretty darn terrible, and that’s because the oil industry as a whole wreaks havoc on the planet.
Being terrible hardly makes you eco-friendly.
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The bottom line:
– If the imagery so grandiose that it diverts attention from the real issues at hand, it’s greenwashing.
– In general, truly eco-friendly companies aren’t all that overt. They don’t rely on green imagery to sell; their products are often wrapped in plainer packaging, too.
– How to avoid greenwashing? Inspect packaging with a fine-toothed comb. If the imagery suggests a reality that’s too good to be true, it probably is.
2 Avoid greenwashing by calling out fluffy language
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Here’s a list of commonly-used words used to sell products:
- Eco-friendly
- Certified
- Non-toxic
- Pure
- Earth-friendly
- Natural
While the above adjectives lend credibility to a product, corporations wrongly use these labels without consequence.
Food packaging often contains excessive fluffy language. Tyson chicken, for example, boasts being “all natural” on their “premium quality” chicken.
But despite the fancy-sounding descriptors, their product isn’t all that natural: Tyson was busted for using antibiotics; they regularly use genetically-modified corn feed, too.
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The bottom line:
– If there’s no supporting information to explain how a product adheres to its claims, it’s smoke and mirrors.
– Conversely, if a product boasts highly scientific wording that only a scientist could decipher, it’s also greenwashing.
– How to avoid greenwashing? Double check green claims by heading to the corporation’s website. If there’s a lot of ambiguity, you’ve likely spotted greenwashing.
– Similarly, look for 3rd party certifications on packaging. If a product is indeed certified by a 3rd party that information will be front and center on a product’s package.
3. Spot over-emphases
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Corporations *love* to overemphasize.
Overemphasis happens when a product highlights one teeny-tiny green attribute and ignores their other environmentally harmful practices.
Overemphasis calls attention to an eco-friendly attribute that’s not all that important in the grand scheme of things.
Take a sneaker manufacturer who boasts a recycling program for well-used sneakers.
The company mentions its recycling program at every opportunity. Shouts it from the rooftops, even.
Awesome, right?
But the company uses its recycling program as a guise because their factories continue to pollute the streams surrounding their factories.
They are emphasizing one green aspect and ignoring all the rest. That’s greenwashing.
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Need another example? Your smart phone.
The phone’s packaging is made of recycling materials. Yay!
But the real environmental impact of that phone has nothing to do with its packaging and everything to do with its manufacturing.
The Life Cycle Assessment of an iPhone, for example, states that 61% of the phone’s total environmental impact comes from the mining of those raw materials needed to manufacture that phone.
The packaging, although recyclable, really isn’t all that impactful.
To say it another way: While it’s certainly important to package goods in recyclable materials, it’s far more important to change manufacturing practices on the front end (like not mining that copper in unsustainable ways to make that phone).
[Related: Donating’s Dark Side: Where do Donations Really Go?]
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A final example is tampons without applicators. Applicator-free tampons create less waste. Right?
While the plastic-free argument certainly has merit, marketing this singular eco-friendly aspect is greenwashing. That’s because applicator-free tampons spray cotton crops with herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers and other chemicals during the cotton growing process (which is the opposite of sustainable).
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The bottom line:
– Companies that have weaved sustainability into their mission (and not just into their marketing!) will have detailed information about their efforts on their websites.
4. Trust your gut (and Google)
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Companies have a singular goal: To make money. But with a bit of intention and a heck of a lot of conscious consumerism, it’s not all that difficult to discern authentic initiatives from inauthentic ones.
So slow down and trust your gut.
Take bottled water for example.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that the sleek new eco-design doesn’t change the fact that all those plastic bottles are single-use, disposable items.
Or what about boxed water? The slogan is – “boxed is better”.
Better for who, exactly?
Again, trust your gut. Tetrapacks – or boxes lined with plastic – are notoriously difficult if not impossible in many locations to recycle. Then there’s the whole manufacturing and shipment of these boxes; neither is eco-friendly.
So boxed water is better for who, exactly? Surely not the environment.
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The bottom line:
– If your spidey sense goes off, listen.
– If you’re genuinely unsure, go ahead and use Google. The internet is a gigantic black hole of information; use it to your advantage.
What tried-and-true techniques do you employ to avoid greenwashing? Spread your knowledge by leaving a comment!
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