Three Tips to Spot Greenwashing
What IS greenwashing, and why is it important?
According to Business News Daily (August 5, 2022), greenwashing is when a company purports to be environmentally conscious for marketing purposes but actually isn’t making any notable sustainability efforts.
Sometimes greenwashing can be very blatant, for example, sticking pictures of leaves on their product without doing anything to make it greener as in the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
This blog post is in no way an exhaustive guide to greenwashing; however, today we’re providing three rules of thumb to look for when evaluating products for greenwashing.
1: Ask yourself, “Is This Certified?”
It’s easy to make a claim about how so-and-so products are 100% natural, green, nontoxic, or carbon neutral. It’s much harder to evaluate how true that claim is, which is why one of the first things to check for is a certification. Nonprofits like B-Corp work with companies to holistically evaluate a company’s ethical and environmental practices overall, while other nonprofits, including Green Seal, evaluate items on a case-by-case basis. Grove Collective is a website for companies aiming to be plastic-free by 2025. The Library of Congress has also compiled a list of green certifications.
If you see a certification label on something, it’s important to actually research what the certification means to make sure it’s legit.
2: Ask yourself, “Compared to What?”
In 2019, Australia announced it would use government climate funds to upgrade coal plants and make them “green.” Green compared to what? Coal is still going to be coal.
When a company makes a claim, ask yourself, compared to what? EcoWatch points out that a company saying it has increased the amount of recycled material in their products by 50% could just be talking about an increase from 4% recycled to 6% recycled.
Companies play pass-the-hot-potato on which emissions count in order to underreport their carbon footprints. The New York Times reports that on average, a company’s direct emissions are 11 times smaller than the emissions from their supply chains, enabling them to dodge responsibility.
One warning sign in particular is when companies focus on carbon offsets instead of the actual reduction of emissions. The comedian John Oliver, on his show Last Week Tonight, did a humorous overview of the problems with carbon offsets, namely, there isn’t enough land on the planet to plant enough trees to offset our greenhouse gasses!
The devil’s in the details.
3: Ask yourself, “What is This Made From and How Did it Get Here?”
When in doubt, always return to the basics. Search for something locally-sourced instead of something shipped from overseas, and buy organic materials instead of plastic. Take into consideration whether or not you can reuse something before you buy it, and check whether it can be locally recycled.
Please leave your comments below with your own strategies for avoiding greenwashing or email us at environment@lwvchicago.org for more information.
Some resources on greenwashing: