What is GREENWASHING ?
What you need to know about greenwashing in 4 questions.
Adams Mezamigni
Washed Up
Before getting to the heart of the matter with the other articles, let's introduce you the notion of greenwashing.
How can we define greenwashing?
Communication. Advertising. Here is few words that probably come in mind when we think
about greenwashing. A term used to speak of companies that pretend to be more
sustainable than they really are. Sophie Marjanac, Climate Accountability Lead of the
organisation ClientEarth explains that: “Greenwashing is where a company uses
advertising and public messaging to try to appear to be environmentally sustainable and
green – greener than it really is. It’s also a technique used by certain companies to distract
consumers from the fact that their business model and activities actually do a lot of
environmental harm and damage.”
Some media productions clearly denounced greenwashing. For instance, the director
Werner Boote filmed a documentary in 2019 called “The Green Lie”. He spoke out
greenwashing; sustainable palm oil was one of his main focuses.
How can we SPOT greenwashing?
Greenwashing represents important stakes, financial or political for instance. We can find
this process in gas, oil sectors, area of plastics and packaging, as an example. On the one
hand, companies spend money to attract consumers, and on the other hand, they try to
show to decision-makers (governments), investors, or else public that they are conscious
about climate change, and appear sustainable.
Sophie Marjanac gives some advice to spot greenwashing: “There’s a lot of surprisingly
simple ways in which brands engage in greenwashing – the way that they design their
packaging for example. If you literally put something in green, more ‘natural looking’
packaging, a certain kind of consumer is more likely to buy it, and you can even charge
more for it. Things are often labelled as ‘eco’ or ‘sustainable’ without those terms actually
having any real meaning.” she explained.
greenwashing: what about the law?
At an international level, there is no uniform regulation about laws, nor specific anti-
greenwashing legislation; the legal framework existing is on a national level.
As examples, we can take the cases of two countries: France and the United Kingdom.
In 2021, the first one, which is presided by Emmanuel Macron, adopted a “Circular
economy law” and a "Climate and resilience law", including provisions on how to
communicate about "sustainability", prohibiting the use of claims such as "environmentally
friendly”, "biodegradable" or "any other equivalent mention" (Code of Environment). These
provisions, in this French Code of Environment, came into effect on January 1 2022.
In the UK, the organisations to be refer to are the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA),
but also advertising regulatory codes like CAP and BCAP, which make part of the
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
On September 20, the CMA published a "Green Claims Code", with a goal to protect
consumers from misleading environmental claims, and "help businesses comply with the
law." it announced in a press release.
wHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Greenwashing is a term that we owe to American environmentalist Jay Westervelt in the
1980s. In fact, during this period, he was visiting a South Pacific hotel, the Beachcomber
Resort, and choose this word to describe their behaviour. The word was written and coined
in an essay, in 1986.
He saw that there were signs asking guests to reuse their towels in order to “save the
environment.” However, Westervelt noted the vast amount of wastage the rest of the hotel.
There were no efforts being made towards sustainability. He concluded that the hotel was
trying to reduce costs by not having to wash towels as much but were trying to market this
cost-cutting ruse as eco-friendly behaviour.
In 2012, Jay Westervelt declared about this, to The Daily Finance, that the word
greenwashing just came to him. "It seemed really logical, pretty simple, kind of like
whitewashing." he added.
Now that you know a little more about greenwashing, here is the topics that you are going
to find out by reading our file : the Cop26, Google/Facebook, and their promise of zero
emissions, environment labels, but also a focus energetic companies like Total.
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