What is greenwashing?
Being a sustainable organisation has numerous benefits – it’s good for the planet, it improves staff attraction and retention, and it positively promotes the work and the ethos of the organisation.
All these benefits mean many organisations are striving to improve their environmental performance and implement sustainability roadmaps. However, some organisations are more sincere in their attempts to promote their sustainability plans than others.
There are, unfortunately, some organisations that attempt to portray their actions and intentions as sustainable practices, although this isn’t always the case. This is known as greenwashing – what Greenpeace defines as “a PR tactic used to make a company or product appear environmentally friendly, without meaningfully reducing its environmental impact”.
How to spot greenwashing
One of the core problems with greenwashing is that, unless you’re a sustainability expert or are particularly knowledgeable about certain industries that may be making green claims, it can be really difficult to identify when an organisation is greenwashing.
The old adage of “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” often rings true – healthy skepticism is needed when assessing potential greenwashing claims. Has the organisation made an overarching claim about their own behaviour or actions without providing any evidence to back it up? If so, this is a red flag.
Another red flag is an organisation making a broad claim without being adequately specific. An organisation may use confusing definitions to cause misunderstanding, ultimately causing consumers to do the wrong thing, such as recycling a whole package when only particular elements of the package are recyclable.
It is difficult to name every single tactic employed as greenwashing evolves and becomes more sophisticated, which is a scary thought. However, it emphasises the need for people to improve their knowledge about sustainability to enable them to call out greenwashing when they see it. As organisations receive more backlash and recognise that it is an incredibly costly and difficult task to fool the public with, the less valuable the practice becomes.
It's worth researching for greenwashing examples to familiarise yourself with the practice, how it’s conducted, how you can spot it, and how you can counter or prevent it happening.
Impact of greenwashing
Greenwashing rightly receives widespread backlash when it’s spotted, however, the muddy waters it creates has caused a significantly negative practice too – something that is being called ‘green hushing’. This is when organisations keep their sustainability goals and climate pledges away from the public out of fear of scrutiny.
A cynical way of looking at this is that, if the organisation was sufficiently confident in their goals and commitments, then they wouldn’t be fearful of accusations of greenwashing. But observing instances of greenwashing causes low confidence in well-meaning organisations. They may start to question whether they’re being robust enough, or if they even have anything worth saying at all. This confidence hit and subsequent mindset change needs to be addressed, as many organisations sustainability journey is in its fledgling years, but this doesn’t mean that scrutiny is deserved. Improving environmental performance and reaching net zero is a journey that needs to be communicated.
Similarly, another impact is that sincere organisations that are actively trying to improve their environmental performance and sustainability credentials can find it hard to promote their work and cut through the noise of greenwashing. They may not have had their confidence knocked, but they’re struggling to communicate to the public about their sustainability journey and achievements.
How to avoid greenwashing
The government is increasingly cracking down on greenwashing, recently announcing that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will begin analysing the accuracy of green claims for the sale of household essentials. This is a crucial move, as it will improve consumers ability to identify it.
As an individual, the best thing you can do to avoid succumbing to it is to equip yourself with knowledge to identify the signs and signals of greenwashing. Furthermore, when identifying examples of greenwashing, using your voice to expose the practice helps to raise awareness and prevents it from happening in the future.
As an organisation, it’s important to be meticulous in analysing your sustainable practices, as well as the way you measure and report your environmental performance. Back up your claims with data, and clearly communicate what your next steps are. Furthermore, close attention needs to be paid to the way you promote your work. Avoid using fluffy language with no clear meaning or way to back up your claim, such as ‘eco-friendly’.
Be aware of greenwashing
As evidenced above, greenwashing comes from all sorts of industries in several different ways. Very few, if any, people can be industry experts in all sectors, so being able to spot it isn’t simple.
However, there is plenty that individuals and organisations can be doing to spotting red flags and preventing greenwashing to continue – from conducting your own research to backing up your claims with robust data.
If we simply allow it to continue, then there are numerous negative impacts that will be felt by both individuals and organisations, and, of course, the only planet we have.