Greenwashing

The word is ‘greenwash; and business watchdog group CorpWatch defines it as, “phenomenon of socially and environmentally destructive corporations attempting to preserve and expand their markets by posing as friends of the environment.” The phrase is so popular, it was included in a recent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Hamish McLennan, CEO of ad agency Y&R, warns companies of the danger of greenwashing. They have “got to show that there’s substance behind what you say. Otherwise, it could backfire.”

TerraChoice, an environmental marketing agency, has established the “six sins of greenwashing,” a by-no-means-definitive but still useful checklist of the most common flaws in greenwashing advertising.

TerraChoice conducted a survey in 2007 of products that laid claim to being environmentally friendly.

The results of the study were damning. Only one of the 1,018 products examined did not break any of the sins.

TerraChoice CEO Scot Case explained the phenomenon of greenwashing in an October interview with CBS News, “It’s just something that the marketing department created rather than a legitimate marketing claim.”

This past summer, the Federal Trade Commision conducted two workshops focusing on overhauling its “Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims,” often referred to as the “Green Guide.” The guide has existed since 1998 and serves as legal means to enforce and ensure honesty in advertising.

“A lot of it is done with images; pictures of trees, the globe, kids, kids ON the globe,” explains Leonard Gordon, Director of the Northeast Regional Office of the FTC. “It’s not a simple problem, and it’s probably not going to have a simple solution.”

The FTC expects to release a new edition of its Green Guide by the end of 2009. Can consumers wait that long?

The Good

Wal-Mart is one of the few companies that has actually found increased business in these tough economic times. While the stingy company is not known for its friendliness (complaints frequently revolve around it driving local businesses to close and its distaste for unions are relatively well-known), it has found economic sense and cents in adopting green policies to cut business costs.

Wal-Mart is the single largest private consumer of electricity in the United States and aims to raise energy efficiency at existing stores by 20 percent by 2012. By 2015, the company plans to have doubled the fuel efficiency of its shipping vehicles.

The company has also built several prototype stores tailored to energy efficiency. The latest, in Las Vegas, reportedly uses 45 percent less energy then a typical Wal-Mart store. The Vegas location is specially tailored for the desert climate, “to better align our stores with the communities we serve,” according to vice president of Prototype and New Format Development, Charles Zimmerman.

In 2005, company CEO and President Lee Scott hired Conservation International, a nonprofit group more known for working with indigenous people to protect their lands, to assist Wal-Mart in adopting sustainable practices. Wal-Mart has even gone as far as bringing none other than the tree hugging poster boy himself, Al Gore, into the mix to deliver a motivational message to Wal-Mart corporate headquarters.

Worst of the Worst

Is a company reworking their logo logo and then spending $200 million in an advertising campaign enough to convince consumers that they too are eco-friendly?

British Petroleum – BP dominated the headlines in the dog days of summer in 2007 when Indiana regulators awarded this company a permit to increase the amount of ammonia it dumps into Lake Michigan by 35 percent. While the amounts were still under the federal guidelines, it caused an uproar among Illinois politicians and citizens.

In 2007, BP agreed to pay fines and restitutions totalling $370 million. The fines were the result of a fatal explosion in Texas, crude oil leaking from pipelines in Alaska and fraud and propane price manipulation, according to a 2007 document from the Department of Justice.

Exxon Mobil – Oil mega-giant distributed funds to 39 lobbying groups of the “climate denial industry,” according to a report in the Guardian. These groups attempt to downplay the notion that our climate is changing as a result of human activity. In Exxon Mobil’s defense, the company cut funding in 2008.

General Electric – GE launched a $90 million public relations campaign entitled “Ecomagination.” The campaign focuses on many of the elements that Leonard Gordon discussed. Happy elephants, walking trees and young children are but some of the imagery found in commercials and on the campaign’s website.

Just a few weeks after the launch of its Ecomagination campaign, GE was fighting Congress, trying to delay a clean-up operation in the Hudson River. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007 that as GE was prepping lawyers and lobbyists to weaken rules regarding pollution generated by trains and the nation’s railroads, while still in the midst of its strong Ecomagination marketing campaign.

This is by no means an accusation of guilt or negligence, merely an attempt to shed light on what may be otherwise misleading marketing.