One of the perennial themes of the greenwashing movement is the lack of governmental oversight. The green movement is a recent development in our culture and Government often takes years (or decades!) to catch up.
Because of this lack of oversight, companies can throw out false claims about their environmental friendliness virtually unchecked. The UK has seen a lot of greenwashing lately and a new steering committee has been formed to develop tighter guidelines to supervise environmental claims made by companies.
The committee will include the Advertising Standards Association. The ASA fields complaints about greenwashing in advertising so they are suitably placed to head up this effort.
The Greenwashing Blog just joined the Hippie Network, and we’re feeling confident. Enough to challenge one of the biggest greenwashers right off the bat? We think so.
The United States Government is one of the worst greenwashers in the history of the term. Here are some examples of the environmentally misleading statements and programs hailed by the Government that fall very short of the truth.
Greenwashing: The Cash for Clunkers Program
Called one of the most successful programs of the Obama administration of 2009, the cash for clunkers program subsidized the trade-in of older, less environmentally friendly vehicles. Sounds great right? Look deeper.
The program states “New cars give off less emissions. This will be a help to the environment.” The truth is, the environmental impact of creating a new car far outweighed the benefits of driving a slightly newer car that gets slightly better mileage. Let’s see this for what it is, an economic development tool. Which it was very successful at. And that’s fine, but don’t call it an environmental program.
Greenwashing: The Environmental Protection Agency
It almost seems too ironic to be true, but the United States Environmental Protection Agency is an incredibly insulting greenwashing offender. The EPA is charged with the responsibility of protecting the citizens of the United States from environmental threats.
Their mission is to Protect Human Health and the Environment. They claim to be running hundreds of programs to protect us yet delayed the release of scientific evidence that proves greenhouse gasses are harmful to our health.
Greenwashing: Copenhagen and Hopenhagen
We went to Copenhagen with a little hope that something might come from it. That was the whole idea behind the Hopenhagen movement. But with corporate sponsors as “founding partners” there was never any hope. (We’ll get to the “founding partners” later in the week).
The United States came away from Copenhagen $100 Billion more in debt, and without any meaningful commitment from any world leader including President Obama. As was the case previous to the Obama Administration, there was no real commitment to changing our ways.
Clean coal technology: Any technology to reduce pollutants associated with the burning of coal that was not in widespread use prior to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
However, you wouldn’t know this definition by their advertisements. This billboard seen in Pennsylvania paints a pretty different picture of coal as a “clean, green” energy source. Source: http://www.greenwashingindex.com/ad_single.php?id=971
As of today, The Greenwashing Blog have been welcomed into the Hippie Network. They are a progressive network of eco-minded blogs bent on delivering relevant, useful and interesting information to the blogosphere. The Greenwashing Blog will still focus on examples of inaccurate claims of environmental benefit.
I know this blog is about greenwashing, but I’ve decided that every now and then I will take the liberty to tell a story about a company or place that isn’t even thinking about being green whatsoever. I think it is especially important to call this to attention seeing as how the United Nations has arranged a summit with world leaders in December to make some serious commitments about reducing carbon emissions.
Visit Portland, Oregon and you’ll find one of the most innovative cities in the United States in terms of environmental consciousness and keeping the world free of pollutants and chemicals. Granted, not everyone is on the same page, but generally speaking Portland is actively fighting climate change with “sustainable” ideas. Drive 10 out of the city to the Wilsonville CostCo and you have another story altogether.
The image above is the container that comes with a chicken ceasar salad. The container is a hefty plastic that is apparently microwave safe and the bottom tells us to recycle, reduce, and reuse. Everyone who orders a salad gets one of these. You sit at the tables and eat the salad and then you have to throw away this huge piece of plastic before you leave. There is no recycling. I took the hunk of plastic to someone in charge and they said to me that I would just have to throw it away. What a total waste! Can you imagine how many of these they throw away every week? I take 10 minutes to eat a salad and because of it this plastic thing is going to be here for the next 500+ years.
It’s important to press your local businesses to adopt practices that are going to be better for the environment. We are the ones who can change this. Demand recycling and don’t buy things that are marketed to you as “disposable.” These products are not truly disposable. “There is no such place as ‘away.’”
On another note, check out the Living Plastic Free blog, a blog that truly challenges us to buy less plastic. My one purchase at CostCo gave me just as much plastic as this person gets in one whole year.
This feels desperate. The add reads “Chevy offers more models than Toyota or Honda* (*or Nissan or Hyundai or VW) with an EPA est. 30 MPG highway or better. I like the green leaves?
Starbucks Shared Planet. You and Starbucks. It’s bigger than coffee. Use a tumbler. You’ll save 10 cents and another paper cup everytime. But you are buying some plastic material that doesn’t exactly biodegrade (It is, however, 29% post-consumer recycled material). Starbucks is making a ton of money off you when you buy the tumbler and they save extra money when they don’t need to order in as many paper cups. Not that I think it’s a bad idea to use your own coffee mug or a “tumbler.” The Starbucks verbage commands me to “USE A TUMBLER” and by obeying I am apparently doing my part to keep things green and being socially and environmentally conscious. What seems to actually be happenig in this particular campaign is that Starbucks is simply trying to create consumers who don’t think for themselves and feel that by making Starbucks more money they have somehow contributed their part in making the world a better place. I think Starbucks is doing some interesting things with their Shared Planet program, but their marketing campaign is confusing because it seems controlling. Allow me to explain a little:
The Tumbler promotion is part of the Shared Planet campaign that Starbucks is currently running. The Shared Planet statement says, “It’s out commitment to doing business in ways that are good to the earth and to each other. From the way we buy our coffee, to trying to minimize our environmental footprint, to being involved in our local communities.” The statement on the sign then ends by getting you to feel good about your purchase. I’ve heard people say that you are making a guilt-free transaction, which subtly pushes you into buying their products and feeling guilty about buying anything other than their products. “Guilt-free” is not language that Starbucks uses, it is language I have heard used by other people.
On the Starbucks Shared Planet website, you can take the “Mug Pledge” where you will pledge to reuse your mug, or you can take a poll asking whether you will participate in Shared Planet by either (1) Reusing your mug or (2) volunteering in your community. So, if I volunteer in my community I am participating in Shared Planet? And if I reuse my cup I am participating in Shared Planet? This is good marketing because if you take it to it’s logical conclusion, if you volunteer or reuse your cup you may think of Starbucks…much the same way as it’s hard to disassociate the word “apple” with the computer brand of the same name. The problem is that it seems manipulative in that it’s claiming my actions as part of their campaign.
I’m not against Starbucks, I am confused and put-off by their marketing. I think they are doing some good things: “using [their] size for good.” The following links don’t have a whole lot to do with greening things up, but they are an interesting series of links that point out how difficult it is to get the whole story when it comes to Starbucks. The company sounds great sometimes; othertimes it sounds like they are hiding things. I don’t know what to think as a potential customer. I’m sure they are better than many, many other companies. It’s all confusing and overwhelming so I’ve just decided go with my local coffee shop.
Hello subscribers, just letting you all know that you are more than welcome to submit your own greenwashing images and I will publish them here on the blog for you. just email them to thegreenwashingblog(at)gmail(dot)com.
I pulled the above image from the One-City blog. The add is for the Nestle Pure Life water bottle, which has an “Eco-Shape” (notice the trademark there). With this fashionably thinner bottle that has 15% less plastic we can all make a difference. Notice the asterisk* next to the “15% less plastic.”
I’ve looked into it and on the Nestle website it says the bottles now have 30-40% less plastic which might be nice. The note for the asterisk was very hard to find; it was covered by other text and itself was not text, it was a text-turned-image so I couldn’t copy and paste, also the color made it hard to read. It’s the grey text here:
The part I can read says, “… .5L bottles across twelve cities. Over 130 different .5L bottles were weighed across the water, soda, juice and tea categories. On average, the Eco-Shape bottle was found to be the lightest .5L bottle on the market containing 30% less plastic when compared to the average of other .5L bottles.” It’s actually really hard for me even to determine what this means. Are they saying they have less plastic when you compare it to the weight of other bottles? Does that mean that they aren’t actually looking at the exact numbers and statistics of how much plastic goes into their product compared to others, they are just measuring it solely by the weight of other same-sized bottles? Does anyone have a better idea at what this means?
It does seem like they are using less plastic than they use to, even if their measurment standards are a bit unreliable. But I’m not sure that I want to buy their product simply because their bottle has a little less plastic. Let’s be honest here, plastic is never really that great of a thing. If it doesn’t get recycled it lasts a super long time and it’s not actually “easier to live with” as the Nestle web-site claims. I’ve become increasingly wary of the plastic packaging that is wrapped around every little thing, like breath mints, fruit at Trader Joes (that’s another story), and water. We are told we can just throw it away, as if throwing it away is going to make it disappear forever…–>
Have you heard about the North Pacific Gyre, the giant mass of plastic soup in the Pacific Ocean that is about twice the size of Texas? See what happens to a good deal of the plastic we produce:
Not sure this is a greenwashing add…here’s why…
Now you can go green and feel good about yourself by switching to the Well’s Fargo online statements. This doesn’t come anywhere near the Nordstrom add telling us to go green by signing up with their credit card. Well’s Fargo isn’t trying to sell us anything here, they are just trying to save money, and connect in our minds their company with “Saving Trees.” Also I noticed that the term “Go Green” here quickly connects our billing statements to doing it online or on our computers.
