What is greenwashing?

Greenwashing makes it difficult for us to distinguish what’s real and what’s misleading. Here are three articles for a quick crash course on greenwashing to get you warmed up. Read our key takeaways below!

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1. New York Times on "How greenwashing fools us"
2. UL on "The Seven Sins of Greenwashing"
3. Grist on "Corporate Climate Pledges Earn Failing Grades from Investors"

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Why do companies greenwash? 

Greenwashing is a way for companies to falsely promote themselves, “Research shows, again and again, that expressing greenness can be beneficial for companies and brands,” said Menno D.T. de Jong, a communications professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Greenwashing is also often really hard to disprove. Companies know they can tout sustainability and make more money. Most of us fall for greenwashing claims when we see them. (NYT)
 

Are corporate climate pledges a great greenwash?

Oil companies are geniuses when it comes to greenwashing, and of course, since fossil fuels are destroying our planet, this is deadly. BP recently made a “net-zero ambition”, and this plan is… sucky, to put it informally. It’s really easy for companies to make pledges, so they do. The question is, do they follow through? Answer: About half don’t. (Grist)
 

What are the 7 sins of greenwashing?

Keep in mind that these seven sins are subjective, but they’re good indicators. One is the “sin of vagueness” — “All-natural is an example. Arsenic, uranium, mercury, and formaldehyde are all naturally occurring, and poisonous”. The 6 other sins can be found here. (UL)

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The World Economic Forum also has this nice summary article on how to spot greenwashing. If we had to recommend ONE read on this topic, it wouldn’t actually be about greenwashing at all. It’d be about critical thinking and discerning.

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See how greenwashing works through your own eyes. Let’s take a quick break from reading and watch this video covering Why Companies Need to Greenwash.

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You’ll learn that:

• 💸 Many large corporations have a greenwashing budget. Okay, they don’t call it that, but Chevron spent $200,000 per 30-second ad to tout how awesome their butterfly preserve was in conserving nature. The butterfly preserve only cost $5,000 a year to maintain. When marketing is greater than impact, that’s an obvious example of a greenwashing budget

• 👣 “Corporate social responsibility” can be an insidious thing. Yes, corporations should be socially responsible. However, in addition to misleading the public, some companies use CSR to rewrite the narrative of what change means. “BP’s carbon  footprint campaign is a perfect example of this. By redirecting public attention from their oil spills and emissions back towards our own personal carbon footprint, the oil giant made climate action more about individual endeavors than corporate malfeasance”

• 🛍️ Capitalism is the problem, not our buying habits. Green marketing will always be a means to the end of buying more stuff until we change our paradigm. You might have heard the term “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” We need to replace our current extractive economy with community, collaboration, and cooperation

• 🤵We also need immediate-term harm reduction. Changing economic systems and shifting power is a multi-decade process (which we are building the foundation for in our Soapbox Project membership) but in the meantime, we can reduce harm by forcing corporate transparency through lawsuits, third-party auditing, and regulations

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It can be overwhelming trying to figure out what products are truthful and which ones are greenwashing. To make things easy, here are some tips to help you spot and act on greenwashing.

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1. Learn how to talk about it. 

Greenwashing goes under the radar because we don’t know how to recognize it. And if we do, we don’t know how to address it. By reading and sharing this blog, you’re off to a great start!
 

2. Spot dirty ingredients. 

When you download this Think Dirty app, you can scan your household products and understand what ingredients are in them. This app works with a lot of health and beauty related products such as shampoos and soaps. They have almost 2 million products in their database. This is great because we should understand what’s going on in our bodies!
 

3. Reduce your consumption. 

It seems like an obvious action, but greenwashing’s main aim is to get us to buy MORE under the guise that we’re being “more sustainable”. You might be frustrated at the lack of direction with an action like “reduce your consumption”, so here’s something specific that you can do and share with your friends, at least when it comes to navigating the greenwashed world of clothing. Use the #30WearsTest. It’s really simple. You ask yourself: would I wear this item 30 times? If so, you can buy it. This tip is helpful when out shopping with friends and providing them insight on what to buy.
 

4. Ask these questions when you buy or see an ad. 

Critical thinking is THE biggest defense we have against greenwashing, at least until we pass stronger policy. Think about the following: 

1. Who is sponsoring this ad or product?
2. Who financially benefits if I buy this product? 
3. What is the history of this company/person? 4) How transparent is this company?

Often, you’ll see images of cute animals, earthy tones, words like “green” and “eco-friendly” being thrown around. The biggest thing you can look for, though, is transparency. If a company hides its ingredients or makes claims that are hard to verify, it’s probably greenwashing.

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5. Discover ethical brands. 

Goodonyou.eco rates fashion brands through a thorough methodology that includes people, planet, and animals. They have a website and app that uses publicly available data (because “transparency promotes accountability” as they say on their website, and we agree) to help consumers navigate how to make our dollars matter.

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6. Green up your retirement account. 

Most of us don’t think about what’s happening to the hundreds of thousands (or more) of dollars sitting in retirement/savings. That money is likely invested in the very companies that promote greenwashing and climate destruction, and the good news is, it’ll take you less than an hour to change that.

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While we aren’t the ones entirely to blame, we have the power to be conscious of our consumption and put our money where our mouth is. 

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Before we go any further, it's time for you to pledge your commitment. It takes less than 30 seconds to pledge and we can bother you about it in a friendly way, so we can hold each other accountable. Pledge here!

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🎯 Action step 4 of 4: REFLECT — what can you commit to? What fresh perspectives can we look at?

Advertisers are wreaking havoc on our brains. Grist, reports on a new word for an old phenomenon: nature-rinsing. Trickery prevails.

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Let's talk about nature-rinsing. This is the term for polluting companies using nice happy pristine images of nature to show us that they care about the environment. 

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Here's a quote from the article:

"Nature-rinsing is nearly as ubiquitous as nature itself: According to the new report, written in collaboration with researchers at the nonprofit Algorithmic Transparency Institute at the National Conference on Citizenship, environment-related visuals made an appearance in 97 percent of posts from airlines this summer, and well over half of posts from automakers (64 percent) and oil companies (56 percent). “I was shocked by the scale of it when we actually started to quantify it,” Supran said."

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And here's what nature-rinsing looks like (you've probably seen it everywhere before):

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The caption shows off how this new plane uses some shark-like technology to fly better, not mentioning that aviation heavily pollutes the environment. If you interested in learning more, check out the article on how polluters use natural beauty to clean up their image. It's a lot to think about. 

‍The most important thing we can do right now is talk about the crisis we're in. We must boost our critical thinking skills, learn to talk to each other about what truly matters, and share our ideas in a way that doesn't shut down the creative parts of our brains.

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‍🏁 Checkpoint: This is the end of action step 4 of 4: REFLECT.

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Check out our membership community for more resources like free weekly events with social justice experts, sustainable product discounts, pre-written email templates, a social impact job board, and in-person hangouts with new friends. Thanks for taking action with Soapbox Project!