As the idea of living sustainably becomes more popular, there are more products than ever that seem to make it easier than ever. With Earth Day and the ongoing climate crisis, companies are intensely marketing these products and their services with promises to help the planet.
Don’t be fooled.
Some of the green promises companies are making are more about results and gaining customers. This phenomenon even has a name, greenwashing, coined by environmental activist Jay Westerveld in the 1980s. According to The Guardian, Westerveld first came up with the idea when he visited a hotel in Samoa and saw a sign asking people to reuse their towels to help save the environment.
The hotel was expanding. As Westerveld saw it, refraining from washing towels and sheets every day is greener, but this gesture was offset by the environmental impact of tearing the floor to build more hotels. If large companies such as hotels do not have energy-efficient lighting, landscaping and water flow systems, the impact of towel reuse cannot reach its full potential.
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Westerveld wrote about eco-washing three years later, in 1986, and 36 years later, many hotels still encourage the reuse of towels by customers with messages that promote sustainability.
Andreas Rasche, a professor of business affairs at the Copenhagen Business School’s Sustainability Center, says green washing is “an inconsistency between communication and actual practices.”
They are not just hotels. Many online retailers allow shoppers to examine products based on their sustainability claims. Dozens of health and beauty products, including shampoo bottles, makeup and snacks, that promise to be biodegradable, compostable, plant-based or made from recycled materials, are marketed to major retailers.
Many companies are committed to tackling climate change, including low-cost climate change fashion brands such as Shein and Boohoo, which offer “sustainable” clothing collections and have appointed environmental leaders to their businesses. But experts say such efforts alone do not necessarily offset others environmental defects.
The NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch released a report in February detailing the success of 25 of the world’s largest companies in their promises to reduce their emissions. Most of these companies, including Amazon, Google, IKEA, and Walmart, scored low. While all companies have promised to achieve some sort of zero, zero net or carbon neutrality target, only one, Maersk, was found to have “reasonable integrity” to achieve its goal. No company has received a high integrity rating.
Although the marketing of products as green or sustainable has spread further, Rasche told CBS News that this is nothing new.
“Actually, it’s been around for a long time, because consumers have been responding a lot to these social and environmental claims. And when companies realize, ‘Oh, they’re responding, they’re actually buying products because of the ecological attributes.’ “They also feel pressured to make certain statements that are not in line with what they are really doing,” he said.
But being able to say what is real and what is simply smart marketing has become increasingly difficult, with companies becoming “more sophisticated” in their marketing.
This is what Rasche says consumers can do to notice the difference.
- Search for: When looking at products, services and companies that are really taking meaningful action to help the environment and the fight against climate change, Rasche says “take your time”. Instead of choosing the first one on the shelf that has some good sounding statements, look for the business online and see what you can find out about what goes on behind the scenes: where the business invests, who invests in the business and what specific aspects. and measurable goals have been set for sustainability.
- Beware of buzzwords: Don’t take eco-positive words like “natural”, “fair trade”, “vegan”, “cruelty-free”, “made from recycled materials” or “compostable” – at face value. Rasche said: “There are a lot of trendy words, which companies can use more or less without any legal restrictions.”
“You can use those words and there are very few legal definitions around it, it depends a bit on the country,” he said. “… The use of such vague words should sound the alarm in the eyes of the consumer.”
It will take more work, but to make sure you make a truly environmentally friendly investment, he said, you need to look for more independent labels that verify the claims. Some companies, for example, say they are fair trade, a business practice that essentially promises a fairer and more sustainable production and supply process without real certification. FairTradeCertified.org allows people to search for specific products to verify their certification, even if just because the items are Fair Trade certified does not mean that their businesses are free from other environmental damage. Non-governmental organizations and unions also offer independent label verification, he said.
Some companies will also make statements that sound good, but are not really exceptional. For example, some products today boast of being CFC-free, Rasche said, when in fact “it’s the law.”
“It’s nothing special,” he said.
Online databases, such as the Ecolabel Index and the International Trade Center Standards Map, can help classify what different labels mean and what companies need to do to use them.
- Be skeptical: With all these trendy labels and words, it’s easy to believe you’re making an environmentally friendly purchase. But always pause before you buy and consider every aspect of the item or service you are investing in. All plastics end up as microplastics, so if you want to minimize their use in your life, keep this in mind when shopping. , from the item itself even the packaging in which it comes if you order online. And if an item seems cheap, it’s probably because it’s been made cheaply, and most really Earth-friendly items can’t be produced that way.
This Earth Day, the world’s leading experts and scientists continue to do so warn of the dangers ahead if humanity does not take control of the climate crisis. And while companies and world leaders have the upper hand in managing the situation, consumers have the power to force a change of direction.
“The problem is us, as human beings. So if you want to solve the problem, it’s up to us,” Rasche said. “… There is a certain moral obligation to move towards such products of more sustainable origin.
“For consumers, at the end of the day, it’s about realizing that if they want to change something, they have to use their own purchasing power,” he said. “… It’s definitely more sustainable than planting a tree.”
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- Earth Day
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