Greenwashing

Despite decades of environmental advocacy and activism, vested interests around the world are still on a quest to enhance profits instead of protecting the planet. Powerful corporations, and the wealthy individuals who own or run them, use greenwashing to cover their tracks and to beguile consumers.

‘Greenwashing’ describes how companies try to brand their products as being more eco-friendly or sustainable than is really the case. Greenwashing thus misleads consumers into purchasing products which seem less harmful for the planet but in fact do little more than increase profits.

Let us consider, for instance, the problem of plastics pollution, and how greenwashing is drawing attention away from contending with this problem. Single-use plastics have become one of the world’s most serious environmental threats. Staggering amounts of plastic waste are buried in landfills or dumped untreated into rivers and the oceans, where it decomposes into microplastics and becomes a part of our food chain.

However, companies which are leading contributors of plastics use greenwashing tactics to portray recycling as a magic bullet. According to the Break Free of Plastics Coalition’s Global Brand Audit Report, the top polluters in 2023 included Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and British American Tobacco. All these companies have made ambitious claims concerning the potential of recycling plastics, even though less than 10% of plastics are recycled. Some consumer and environmental groups have even issued a legal complaint to the European Commission over the alleged false claims by major corporations about their products using 100% recycled materials.

There have been several other greenwashing lawsuits brought against other large companies including airlines, automobiles, apparel and oil companies for lying about their environmental impacts.

There is growing demand for more sustainably produced goods, and big businesses have been compelled to begin taking notice of these demands. Yet, instead of drastically changing their production methods, many companies have devised advertisement campaigns which aim to beguile their consumers into believing that their products are more sustainable. The Texan oil giant, ExxonMobil, has been accused of greenwashing by aggressively promoting plans for a vast oil refinery and petrochemical complex in the UK to trap carbon under the seabed of the English Channel, even though the project has not received government authorisation, and the company itself has not committed any money to enable carbon capture. An environmental group, ClientEarth, has pointed out that ExxonMobil has been making tall claims about investing in green technologies for over a decade, yet the company had just spent 0.2% of its capital expenditure on renewable energy investments between 2010 and 2018. British Petroleum and Shell have been similarly criticised for misleading advertisements concerning their low-carbon energy efforts.

It is not only western countries or their companies which are guilty of greenwashing. The Indonesian government’s palm oil finance agency recently claimed that this monocrop, which has caused devastation to the country’s forests, is a more powerful carbon sink than natural forests. But this claim was rubbished by experts.

Greenwashing is not only about making inflated claims about companies trying to transition to renewables or recycling but to also deflect from harmful impacts of their major productive focus. Consider, the consternation evoked by the UAE presenting itself not as a leading fossil fuel producer but as a leader in the renewable energy transition. Saudi Aramco’s claims of planting millions of mangrove trees have similarly been described as a deflection tactic which emphasises a single environmental attribute while ignoring adverse impacts associated with its main purpose, which is fossil fuel production.

Greenwashing does no more than provide a dangerously false sense of hope, which draws attention away from the urgent need to take concrete actions to deal with what is fast becoming an existential threat.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2024.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.