Increasingly, consumers are voting
for environmental sustainability with their dollars. For instance,
the North American organic sector is said to be growing by 20
percent a year and the market for healthy, eco-friendly products has
been estimated now to be worth over $200 billion annually in the
U.S. alone. Many consumers are willing to pay significantly more for
products branded “natural” or ”organic,” believing them to be of
superior quality and safer for themselves and for the environment.
Businesses, both large and small, are obliging with an
ever-expanding selection of products catering to this new
eco-sensibility. In addition to fattening their bottom lines by
providing a competitive edge with this growing number of green
consumers, environmental performance has become a point of social
responsibility for many corporations.
However, as green moves beyond niche
market status and becomes the color of choice for mass
merchandisers, not all products and companies are as environmentally
responsible as they advertise themselves to be. Hence, the term
“greenwashing,” which was coined as far back as the 1970s by
environmental activists to describe advertising by corporations
meant to portray them as environmentally responsible in order to
mask environmental wrongdoings. The U.S.-based watchdog group
CorpWatch defines greenwash as “the phenomena of socially and
environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and
expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the
environment.” Former Madison Avenue advertising executive Jerry
Mander (best known for his 1977 book Four Arguments for the
Elimination of Television) called it “ecopornography” in a 1972
article in Communications and Arts Magazine. The term “greenwashing”
is now used to describe a wide range of attempts by businesses to
attract environmentally aware consumers, including the creation of
organizations, celebrity endorsements, event sponsorship and the use
of meaningless and unverifiable words like “natural,” “green,”
“eco-friendly,” “non-toxic and “chemical-free” on labels and
packaging. Even the word “organic” is meaningless unless it is
backed up by certification.
The practice is widespread. In the
spring of 2007, Ottawa-based TerraChoice Environmental Marketing
Inc. sent research teams into six big box stores with instructions
to record the details of every product-based environmental claim
they observed. After recording 1,753 environmental claims on 1,018
products, they tested the claims against current best practices in
environmental marketing. The sources for these best practices
include the International Organization for Standardization (ISO),
the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Consumers Union and the Canadian Consumer Affairs Branch.
Then they studied the resulting list of false or misleading claims
for patterns and lessons, distilling them into the “Six Sins of
Greenwashing.” Of the 1,018 products that made environmental claims,
all but one committed at least one of the Six Sins.
Some examples of this sort of
questionable marketing include golf courses that bill themselves as
“natural” and “green” in spite of heavy pesticide use and office
equipment that is promoted as energy-efficient in spite of high
hazardous material content, indoor air quality issues or
incompatibility with recycled paper or remanufactured toner
cartridges.
Then there are Frito Lay’s “Eco-
Friendly Factory, Low-Guilt Potato Chips,” or at least that’s how
the PepsiCo subsidiary promoted the pesticide sprayed, deep fried
products of its recent green factory retrofit in a press release.
One of the many new so-called “green” magazines recently touted, in
an advertorial feature, paper towels made from recycled paper and
chlorine-free bleach. But this is an inherently non- green and
unnecessary product, easily replaced by reusable cloth towels or,
better yet, a piece of cloth that has outlived its original purpose
as clothing or bedding.
A classic example of greenwashing is
described in an article on the businessethics.ca website by Melissa
Whellams, a corporate social responsibility advisor with Canadian
Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) and Chris MacDonald, a
business ethics professor at St. Mary’s University in Halifax. They
cite an advertisement that appeared in National Geographic magazine
in 2004, in which Ford Motor Company tried to convince readers of
its commitment to the environment by announcing the launch of the
Escape Hybrid SUV and the remodeling of a factory. The ad read,
“Green vehicles. Cleaner factories. It’s the right road for our
company, and we’re well underway.” Whellams and MacDonald note that
Ford failed to tell readers that it only planned to produce 20,000
of its Hybrid SUVs per year, while continuing to produce almost
80,000 F-series trucks per month. “Moreover,” they write, “just
prior to the campaign’s release, the Environmental Protection Agency
announced that Ford had the worst fleet wide fuel economy of all
major automakers. Ford’s failure to live up to its environmentally
friendly image earned the company first prize among America’s top
ten worst greenwashers of the year.”
Unfortunately, Ford got away with
that and continued on with the green paint. In January 2006,
Bloomberg described a Ford ad claiming it was “dramatically ramping
up its commitment” to more environmentally friendly cars. Bloomberg
noted that in 2004 Ford had joined other automakers in suing to
block a California law that would limit emissions of greenhouse
gases. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general, was
quoted as calling some of Ford’s claims “questionable,” telling
Bloomberg, “They’re definitely exploiting the fashion of
environmentally friendly vehicles.”
Another blatant and monumental
instance of greenwashing that has duped some people – including much
of the mainstream media – is the current attempt to paint nuclear
power as environmentally friendly. A TV commercial aired by the
Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear industry trade group,
states: “Nuclear power plants don’t emit greenhouses gases, so they
protect our environment.” What is left unmentioned, of course, are
the greenhouse gas emissions involved with uranium mining, milling,
enrichment and fuel fabrication, not to mention the unsolved problem
of how to dispose of radioactive waste.
The rapid-growing natural food and
personal care products industry is another one that is being outed
for excessive greenwashing.
A study released earlier this year
found a carcinogen in a number of leading so-called “natural”
personal care products. Commissioned by the watchdog group Organic
Consumers Association (OCA) and overseen by environ- mental health
consumer advocate David Steinman, the study analyzed leading
“natural” and “organic” brand shampoos, body washes, lotions and
other personal care products. A reputable third-party laboratory
known for rigorous testing and chain-of-custody protocols performed
the testing.
Apparently, ethoxylation, a cheap
short-cut companies use to provide mildness to harsh ingredients,
requires the use of the cancer-causing petrochemical Ethylene Oxide,
which generates 1,4-Dioxane as a by-product. 1,4-Dioxane is
designated by the State of California to cause cancer, is suspected
as a kidney-, neuro- and respiratory-toxicant, among others and is a
leading groundwater contaminant. It is normally found in traditional
soaps and shampoos, but the OCA report has jolted the natural
products industry.
Some of the well-known brands found
by the OCA study to contain 1,4-Dioxane included JASON Pure Natural
& Organic, Giovanni Organic Cosmetics, Kiss My Face, Nature’s Gate
Organics and Whole Food’s house brand 365. None of the brands
containing the carcinogen bore the USDA organic label. The biggest
offenders were the “natural” dish detergents.
Both the OCA and Steinman called for
misleadingly labeled brands that include ethoxylate ingredients or
otherwise utilize petrochemicals to drop all organic claims from
their branding and labeling.
Further, the OCA has given the companies until September 1 to remove
all “organic” branding and labeling from their packaging under
threat of a lawsuit accusing them of false and deceptive advertising
and unfair and unlawful business practice under California law.
Meanwhile, to avoid 1,4-Dioxane, the
OCA urges consumers to search ingredient lists for indications of
ethoxylation including: “myreth,” “oleth,” “laureth,” “ceteareth,”
any other “eth,” “PEG,” “polyethylene,” “polyethylene glycol,”
“polyoxyethylene” or “oxynol” in ingredient names. In general, the
OCA urges consumers to avoid products with unpronounceable
ingredients.
Reading labels is good advice. That
way, you can try to avoid greenwashing by seeking products that are
certified to meet legitimate environmental standards by an
independent third party. (See sidebar for a list.)
But unfortunately, even
certification isn’t always trustworthy. Aurora Dairy Corporation,
based in Boulder, Colorado, has been accused by the USDA of
willfully violating federal organic law after a formal complaint was
lodged by the Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit farm policy
research group. Aurora and grocery retailers Wal-Mart, Costco,
Target, Safeway and Wild Oats are the subject of class action
lawsuits citing consumer fraud for marketing suspect organic milk.
Independent investigators at the
USDA concluded that Aurora, with $100 million in annual sales from
five dairy facilities in Colorado and Texas, each milking thousands
of cows, had 14 “willful” violations of federal organic regulations.
Aurora was confining cows to factory farm-style pens and sheds in
feedlots rather than grazing the animals as the federal law
requires. Furthermore, Aurora brought conventional animals into
their organic milking operation in a manner prohibited by the U.S.
government’s Organic Food Production Act.
Cornucopia points out that Aurora is
a “horrible aberration.” In a scorecard published last year and
available on its website www.cornucopia.org, the organization rates
over 90 percent of organic name-brand dairy products as truly
subscribing to the letter and spirit of the law.
These green marketing tactics have
caught the eye of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which has
recently been looking at both advertising and packaging claims, as
well as examining the booming business of selling carbon offsets,
which are billed as a way to balance the greenhouse gas emissions
created by activities like excessive computer or paper usage or air
travel, by supporting tree planting or renewable energy projects.
Deborah Platt Majoras, chairwoman of the FTC, has said that with the
tremendous growth in the field, there is potential for abuse of the
public’s trust and that the commission is concerned that some green
marketing assertions are not substantiated.
That erosion of trust breeds
cynicism – or even a backlash. Firms spending money on innovation to
create green products can lose market share to money-saving
greenwashers and due to consumer cynicism. Another danger is that
consumers could be lulled into a false sense of complacency when
surrounded with a sea of green, thinking the environmental problem
is solved merely by buying some dish detergent with a leaf on the
label. A proliferation of greenwashing can also fool regulation-shy
governments into shirking their duty because the corporate sector
appears to be self-regulating.
However, there are no perfect
products and everything we do has an impact. Because the temptation
to greenwash can be seen as a necessary part of an economy’s
adjustment to a new, more sustainable mode, one person’s greenwash
is another person’s market-driven approach to solving global
warming.
And that’s the rationalization used
by the increasing number of non-profit organizations partnering with
corporations: They believe that they can then have a larger impact
than if they struggled along on their own.
In the U.S., the Climate Action
Partnership is one example of such a partnership between
conglomerates like BP America, Duke Energy, DuPont, General Electric
and PG&E with groups like Environmental Defense and the Natural
Resources Defense Council.
In recent years, a number of
Canadian conservation groups, including the World Wildlife Fund, the
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and the Canadian Boreal
Initiative, have receiving funding from Pew Family Charitable
Trusts, set up by the same family that used to control the Alberta
Tar Sands giant Suncor.
In what may be the most
controversial of these liaisons, one of the least green companies –
The Clorox Company, which was named the U.S.’s most chemically
dangerous by the Public Interest Research Group – has teamed up with
the Sierra Club, self-described as the nation’s oldest, largest and
most effective environmental organization. Last December, the Sierra
Club’s board voted to allow Clorox to use its name and logo to
market a new line of non-chlorinated cleaning products called “Green
Works.” In return, Clorox Company will pay Sierra Club an
undisclosed but “substantial” fee, based partly on product sales.
The deal angered and embittered Club members country-wide. This
Spring, the national board took the unprecedented action of removing
the leaders of the Club’s 35,000-member Florida chapter and
suspending the Chapter for four years. The chapter leaders had been
highly critical of the agreement.
No doubt these organizations need
the money and these liaisons help take their messages to the masses.
But they must be vigilant if the funding isn’t to compromise the
quality or believability of the message. And the fact remains that
the corporations are benefitting from branding themselves as green
when they’re often far from that. And that, like all greenwashing,
is deceptive.
