Greenwashing
Greenwashing refers to the practice of exaggerating or misrepresenting the environmental benefits of products, services, or corporate practices, often to enhance public image or increase sales. Coined in 1986 by environmentalist Jay Westerveld, the term combines "green," denoting eco-friendliness, with "whitewashing," which implies covering up or misrepresenting the truth. Originating in the mid-1960s, greenwashing gained momentum as companies began promoting themselves as environmentally conscious amid a rising consumer demand for green products.
As the environmental movement expanded, marketing tactics evolved, leading to an increase in products falsely labeled as organic, natural, or recyclable. Critics argue that greenwashing not only deceives consumers but also diverts resources away from genuine environmental solutions. Various advocacy groups have identified common signs of greenwashing, such as vague claims or irrelevant attributes, and have initiated efforts to protect consumers through independent certification and legal guidelines. Regulatory bodies, including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union, have introduced measures to combat greenwashing and promote transparency in environmental marketing. Overall, the practice poses significant challenges for consumers seeking authentic green alternatives.
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Subject Terms
Greenwashing
DEFINITION: Public relations and marketing practice of exaggerating or misrepresenting the environmental benefits and friendliness of products, services, policies, or practices.
With the rapid growth of the environmental movement and consumer spending on green products since the 1960s, greenwashing has also proliferated, resulting in consumer mistrust that is detrimental to the entire market. Greenwashing has also hurt the environment by persuading consumers to purchase products that are not actually green instead of truly green products. Valuable economic resources have been funneled into greenwashing instead of into environmental problem solving.
Overview
In 1986, environmentalist Jay Westerveld coined the word “greenwashing” in an essay criticizing the hotel industry’s money-saving practice of asking guests to reuse their towels as a way to reduce environmental impact. The term combines the concepts of "green," meaning environmentally friendly, and "whitewashing," in the sense of covering something up. It came into common usage over the following years. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary added the term “greenwashing” in 1999.
The actual phenomenon of greenwashing is considered to have begun during the mid-1960s, however. In response to the growing environmental movement, automobile, chemical, oil, and utility companies began to develop green corporate images and increasingly sought to promote their products and activities as environmentally friendly. By the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, companies were spending about $1 billion annually on green advertising, much more than they were spending on actual environmental research and development.
During the 1980s, as the antinuclear and environmental movements gained momentum, greenwashing became both more prevalent and more sophisticated. By the twentieth anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1990, 25 percent of new household products were being advertised as organic, recyclable, natural, ozone-friendly, compostable, nontoxic, or biodegradable. However, critics increasingly suggested that these marketing tactics were often hollow, aimed purely at increasing sales with little concern for actual best practices for environmental sustainability.
The environmental activist organization Greenpeace published The Greenpeace Book of Greenwash in 1992. This book helped bring attention to greenwashing as a global economic force, with transnational corporations (TNCs) assuming a significant role in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit. The book profiled nine TNCs that had spent huge amounts of money to develop a green image, among them the Du Pont chemical company, inventor and leading producer of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the primary chemicals destroying the earth’s protective ozone layer. Du Pont projected a green company image in a television advertisement that featured Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” playing over images of seals, flamingos, and dolphins. Greenpeace also cited Westinghouse Electrical Corporation for suggesting that nuclear plants, like trees, are good for the environment, and described how the Mitsubishi Corporation distributed a comic book in high schools that justified the corporation’s commercial logging in tropical rain forests by blaming on poverty and shifting cultivation by Indigenous peoples.
Such examples contributed to the popular understanding of greenwashing and its effects. Environmentalists and other critics continued to document numerous alleged examples of greenwashing over the following decades. One notable trend involved organizations or products choosing a name with "green" connotations to disguise their actual aim or impact. This form of greenwashing was sometimes called "greenscamming." One commonly cited example was the National Wetlands Coalition, a group that represented energy companies and other developers in advocating against wetlands protections.
Opponents argue that greenwashing is unethical and actively damages environmentalist causes by misleading consumers. Some business analysts have also advised that greenwashing can backfire and seriously damage organizations that engage in the practice. If deceitful tactics are exposed, consumer indignation may result in boycotts or other immediate negative financial impacts. Longer term, the organization's reputation may be tarnished.
Protecting Consumers
Many environmental advocacy groups have published commentary on greenwashing to raise public awareness of the practice. Critics point out marketing tactics including the hidden trade-off (promoting a product’s single green attribute while ignoring its harmful qualities), vagueness (for example, “all natural” could still mean that a product contains naturally occurring poisons), and irrelevance (providing truthful but not helpful information). Similarly, experts have noted that consumers should be alert for signs of greenwashing such as the following: “fluffy” language using terms with no clear meaning, supposedly green products made in polluting factories, irrelevant claims emphasizing insignificant green attributes, “best in the class” suggestions that a product is greener than others, jargon that only scientists can understand, and imaginary third-party endorsements.
In efforts to protect consumers from greenwashing, numerous groups have formed to independently rate, label, or certify products according to various environmental standards. For example, in 1989, the nonprofit National Fenestration Rating Council was founded in the United States to provide independent verification of the energy performance of windows and doors. Also in 1989, the US nonprofit Green Seal was created to provide scientific certification of the green claims made by home, construction, and office products. In 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency began its Energy Star program, a voluntary rating and labeling system concerned with the energy-efficiency of consumer products.
In some cases, anti-greenwashing efforts have gone beyond recommendations and involved legal action. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established its first voluntary guidelines for environmental marketing, known as the Green Guides, in 1992. The FTC updated these guidelines in the 2012 with new standards intended to deal with escalating greenwashing, and it subsequently began to crack down on companies for false or misleading advertising around sustainability claims. The US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also monitored greenwashing claims used by businesses to entice investors. Many other countries and jurisdictions have established their own regulatory efforts to identify and prosecute fraudulent claims. In 2022, the European Union announced new reporting requirements for corporate sustainability, intended to prevent greenwashing in the investment sphere.
Bibliography
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