What is greenwashing: 4 unethical tactics to look out for
You know the term “greenwashing”, but how do you spot a green marketing fraud that isn’t actually environmentally friendly?
Text: Shannon T
Chances are you’re faced with endless eco-friendly products as you scroll through social media, appealing to your inner conscience as a citizen of Mother Earth while still getting a retail therapy high. The growing preference for green products, especially amongst Gen Z shoppers, has seen brands old and new claiming to have upped their environmental practices. However, with this comes a certain amount of “greenwashing” and unethical tactics so it’s wise to understand what greenwashing is and how to know if you’re a victim of it.
What is greenwashing?
Greenwashing started with a hotel that wanted to wash fewer towels in 1986. Environmental activist Jay Westerveld was struck by the irony of a hotel that placed cards in his hotel room discouraging guests from replacing their towels to “conserve the Earth's vital resources” when it was really just a way to save money on washing towels. The incident tickled him enough to pen a whole essay about it, in which he coined the term “greenwashing”.
Jay used “greenwashing” to describe unsubstantiated or misleading claims about the environmental impact of a company’s green products and services. At the time, corporations could get away easily with inaccurate branding messaging due to a lack of social media. More than three decades on, fact-checking is just a couple of taps on our devices away.
Who’s guilty of greenwashing?
The fashion industry gets called out the most for greenwashing, especially huge, multi-national fast-fashion brands who create advertisements with elements of nature or put out “sustainable collections” made with recycled textiles.
H&M has allegedly become a textbook example for fast-fashion greenwashing. The Norwegian Consumer Authority (CA) criticised the brand for claiming that their Conscious line is beneficial to the environment without proper evidence. The call-to-action on their site — “The shortcut to sustainable choices? Shop Conscious” — has been deemed pretty ironic when consuming more is literally the opposite of being sustainable. Their textile recycling programme is also claimed to be over-glorified — H&M's Development Sustainability Manager Henrik Lampa has admitted that only 0.1 percent of all clothing received is actually recycled. With regular, non-conscious new fashions coming into stores every month or even week, it hard to believe that fast fashion brands can ever truly be sustainable.
Fashion may be the second dirtiest global industry after oil, but they aren’t the only players in the greenwashing game. Fraudulent green marketing has been identified in industries ranging from cereals and shampoo to vehicles and car fuel. Last year, the European Commission and national authorities assessed sustainability claims made online by companies in fashion, cosmetics, household equipment and travel sectors, and a shocking 42% of them were determined to be false, deceptive, or potentially unfair commercial practices under EU law. The majority of sellers had failed to offer consumers enough information to assess the claim's accuracy, while 37% of them had used vague terms without substantiating proof.
Unethical tactics to look out for
Greenwashing is problematic for promoting sustainability. Blatant misrepresentations may result in green scepticism and a loss of trust in ethical brands altogether. This can hinder the efforts of genuine sustainable brands, and could severely impact smaller, niche brands who rely on consumers’ faith to sustain their business and eco-friendly cause. Not all misleading greenwashing practices are the same. Here’s a roundup of the four most commonly used unethical tactics to look out for by businesses to appear eco-friendly.
1. Green imagery
Humans are extremely visual creatures and businesses know that. By advertising or packaging their products with images of natural elements like trees, plants and animals, our minds are lured into linking these products with being eco-friendly, even when there is no proof. In reality, genuine earth-friendly products tend to use simpler packaging and minimal advertising, as their products speaks for itself.
2. Deceptive labels
How often do we do our due diligence as consumers to look up certification labels on the products we buy? Greenwashing companies bank on naïve consumers who do not fact-check claims. Amidst superfluous descriptions that brands use to boost their product, many are falsely declared or self-created, and therefore unreliable as measures of ethical practice.
3. Hidden trade-offs
While green labels may be accurate sometimes, they could be hiding dirty secrets. Some corporations put up convincing acts of being environmentally conscious to conceal a slew of non-ethical trade-offs. An example would be fast fashion brands launching take-back programmes where textiles are collected for recycling. Sadly, the real amount of recycling done with these collections tends to be way too low to actually effect change, or is minuscule when compared to the waste they contribute.
4. Lesser of two evils
The “lesser of two evils” tactic describes how businesses draw consumer attention away from prevailing ethical issues in their operations. While green claims may be true for the product within its category, the greater environmental impacts of the category as a whole are ignored. TerraChoice, a Canadian-based environmental marketing agency, describes this with examples of businesses using environmental qualifiers such as "organic" or "green" for products when they belong to questionable categories in the first place.
Ultimately, it’s crucial for environmental impact for consumers to learn to differentiate between actually sustainable brands and those who make-pretend — after all, consumers hold the power (and the dollars) over businesses. After delving into the practices of the likes of H&M, CA director Elisabeth Lier Haugseth reminds us all that "as a consumer, you need to be aware that the green product you have acquired may not be as good for the environment as you got the impression of.”
While watchdogs like Greenpeace and CorpWatch exist to call b*llshit where its due, we can all take on a more active role by fact-checking claims, labels and business processes before making purchases on green products. Sure, it is a bit of a hassle to dig into the nitty-gritty, but if you’re already buying sustainable goods, don’t you want your money to contribute towards honest and ethical intentions?
When shoppers become clear about greenwashing and how to dodge marketing fads, this misleading practice will become much more difficult. More effort and resources will be needed to trick a learned audience, hence dissuading companies from doing so. To put it simply, it’s not worth it.
