Corporate Greenwashing

By now many of us are familiar with the practice of “green washing.” The term was coined in the 1980’s by American environmentalist Jay Westerveld to criticize hotels which endorsed the reuse of towels but lacked concrete recycling strategies. The term has come to describe disingenuous environmental claims in general. Green washing as a phenomenon has been observed in a variety of industries and sectors over the past several decades. A report in 1991 found that 58 percent of environmental advertisements within their sample made at least one misleading claim. Green washing frequently manifests itself in the form of vague or non-substantive claims about particular products, however, the motivation to appear “green” can also affect public relations for the corporation as a whole.

We all know that the image corporations project can significantly impact people’s behavior and views. This is why companies spend incredible sums of money on public relations and advertising every year. American consumers have recently shown a preference for buying “environmentally friendly” products. In response, corporations have begun to use the rising environmental concern as a tool within their marketing strategies. The release of products labeled "green" skyrocketed from sixty per year in 1986 to more than eight hundred in 1991, and we have all witnessed the rapid growth of this phenomenon in the past twenty years. The profit incentives behind riding this wave of green enthusiasm are transparent. If a corporation’s image is a reflection of actual practices, then this marketing technique could provide a mechanism for consumers to force corporations to adopt more environmentally sound policies. However, the methodology of corporations for presenting themselves as environmentally friendly is largely unregulated, and studies have shown that without the enforcement of outside sanctions corporate self-regulation is frequently ineffective.

Campaigning and the altering of buying behaviors have been shown in the past to be effective methods for changing corporate behavior. The practice of green washing undermines these two paths towards amelioration. If consumers are not able to distinguish between real and unauthentic claims, then we cannot act in ways that will force corporations to do the right thing. In this respect, determining the validity of environmental claims and identifying instances of green washing holds significant import.

In 2007, Norway outlawed the use of green advertising for car companies. Their rationale was that all cars pollute, so to advertise them as environmentally friendly is simply lying to the public. This made me wonder about whether there were elements of green washing in the way car companies present themselves on their websites. I looked at the number of pages devoted to environmental claims, the total number of words in these pages, and the number of clicks it takes to get to the main environmental section on these sites.

	# of pages	# of words	# of clicks
Ford	17	8755	1
Mazda	16	8617	1
Volvo	4	805	1
Daimler	11	5653	0
BMW	11	4265	1
Hyundai	6	1463	1
Toyota	11	2161	2

The websites were largely similar in number of pages of environmental content, the clicks it took to get there from the main page, and the number of natural images employed. The low values for the click count provides evidence for a similar desire amongst the corporations to present their environmental image prominently on their websites. There was significant variation in the word counts between the sites, but overall the companies seemed to present themselves in comparable ways. The homogeneity of these corporate images suggests that green washing may be occurring. There is no competitive drive to become more environmental if all companies look equally green.

But! Perhaps all these corporations really are all equally green. Not very likely. I examined the Environmental Protection Agency metrics of Toxic Releases (TRI) and Hazardous Waste Violations and Permits (RCRIS) for each of these companies and found that there was significant variation in the environmental harm done by these corporations (std dev: ~10,476; ~8647).

What can we do? Well one way to combat green washing is to become better at spotting it. I looked at how often the websites used the terms "sustainable," "green," and "recycling."

There is a definite tendency towards use of the word “sustainable” despite its ambiguous nature. Variations on the word “sustainability” were used twelve times on one of the web pages for Ford Motors. The ubiquitous nature of this word category and the lack of a universally accepted definition dilutes its rhetorical force. “Sustainability” appears to be a word that one should be wary of when confronted with evaluating environmental claims.

Some people argue that the consumption based approach for changing corporate behavior is fundamentally flawed. Critics question whether the achievements of this approach provide any substantial environmental benefits. Many view the culture of consumerism itself to be responsible for most environmental problems and argue that the entire economic system needs to be changed. From a pragmatic perspective, any means that can move society towards a better future should be exploited to its fullest extent. Environmentally minded marketing draws attention to real environmental problems and holds the possibility for contributing to substantive changes in policy.

There is something about green washing that just seems wrong. There is a little voice in my head telling me that corporations should not be allowed to lie to the public. Should the government regulate environmental claims or do better methods need to be developed by the market so that consumers can distinguish the fakers? Either way, if green washing is not challenged then it will lead to the end of all environmental marketing since all environmental claims will come to be viewed with equal suspicion.