In this video segment what I would like to talk about is the term greenwashing. The origins
of the word greenwashing come from being structurally similar to the word whitewashing. Now, whitewashing
historically was a way of painting something white using a material instead of paint that
is called whitewash. One of our cultural touch points for this phrase comes from the story
of Tom Sawyer who famously got friends of his to whitewash a picket fence for him instead
of doing it himself. The way he got people to do that was the subject of the story, but
the whitewashing itself was like painting the fence white but it was using an inferior
and cheaper coating than paint. It was just something that people did when they couldn't
afford high-quality paint. Well, over time that became a metaphor in the political realm,
whitewashing, and it became a derogatory way of calling out a politician for trying to
deliberately conceal or hide some unpleasant fact about a person or an organization by
using some phrase or some technique of rhetoric to sort whitewash over that issue. Oh, that
politician is just whitewashing over the scandal by saying that it didn't happen. It was a
derogatory term for covering something up and trying to make some problem go away. Well,
greenwashing is roughly the same thing but it's in an environmental context. It's used
as a derogatory term against companies, or products, or initiatives when the person who
is calling it greenwashing feels that what the company or organization is doing is diverting
attention away from what the real environmental concern might be. In 1999 the term greenwashing
was added to the Oxford English Dictionary and the definition was from green meaning
not ecological harmful and on the pattern of whitewash as we just saw. The definition
would be disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally
responsible public image for that organization. So, here are some examples of things that
could be considered greenwashing depending on the context in which it takes place. The
first and most famous one is the hotel towel cards that you see sometimes when you're staying
in a hotel. Another one would be paperless billing, and a third one would be reusable
grocery bags. Let me explain what I mean by how these things are greenwashing. Let's start
with the hotel placard. The idea here, the observation here is when a hotel asks you
to reuse a towel by putting these placards there. What the placard says is if you would
like to save our environment rather than us washing your towels every day just hang up
your towels again and we won't wash them. If you do want them washed leave them on the
floor or in the tub and our housecleaning employees will take those things and wash
them, but we won't wash them daily as was our previous practice because that's bad for
the environment because it uses detergent and water. The hotel places a little cardboard
placard there in your room so that you can participate in this practice. The observation
here is that when the hotel asks you to reuse the towel it isn't motivated after a well
thought out approach to sustainability because it happens to directly coincide with the hotel's
economic benefit. So it's not inaccurate that saving towels and not washing them benefits
the environment, it does. It just happens to be that that green measure, that environmental
action directly coincides with lower cost to the hotel. This is greenwashing because
it asserts that there is an environmental motivation for doing something that could
just as easily be economically motivated. For the hotel to justify that what they're
doing is really out of an ecological concern or an environmental concern they would have
to demonstrate that they're not just doing things as an initiative to stop their towels,
they should talk about how much water they are using in order to water their grounds,
or how they're managing their back of house services, or perhaps more where an environmental
impact is being made and where it may not directly coincide with lowering costs for
the hotel. So, one example of greenwashing and the first one that was called out were
these hotel placards. Another one is paperless billing. Now, you may have several kinds of
organizations that at one point were willing to offer you paper billing or by default offer
you paper billing and then very quickly ask you and encourage you to go green, go paperless,
and by that they mean rather than having to mail you a statement of your credit card or
mail you a statement of some interaction that you're having with them, they ask for your
permission for them to send it to you as e-mail on the basis of this being more green or environmentally
conscious because it doesn't use paper, it's all electronic. Well, again, it's true that
it doesn't use paper and in that way it reduces the environmental impact of the billing cycle.
However, it also happens to directly coincide with the organization spending less money.
So, on the one hand it's a win-win, on the other hand it's a greenwashing claim if the
only thing that the business is doing that is environmentally sensitive or environmentally
conscious is the thing that also happens to lower its costs. The final example is the
grocery bag example. Now, if you go into a grocery store and they decide that they are
no longer going to provide bag, paper bags or plastic bags, to put your groceries in
and instead they are going to charge you for those bags or grocery bags, but if you bring
in your own reusable grocery bags then you can use those without any cost that could
be greenwashing because what they have done is they have lowered their cost by no longer
providing bags, paper, plastic or otherwise, and instead asking you to bring your own bags.
So, yes it's true that in this process asking people to use reusable grocery bags they've
reduced the number of disposable bags that are being created and used by their organization.
On the other hand, it also directly coincides with lowering their costs. So, if the only
thing that the grocery store is doing to benefit the environment happens to be things that
are lowering their costs then it's greenwashing. It's purporting that the rationale for what
they are doing is an environmental motivation when as a corporation it's probably more driven
by an economic concern. Now, let me put a caveat in here. Just because organizations
are doing this doesn't mean that they aren't environmentally concerned or making environmental
initiatives. It's just that these things by themselves don't justify a company as being
environmental. Another point is that sometimes companies will do these things not because
they want to but because they are forced to. There are some places for example where using
plastic bags at the grocery store has been banned by regulation, and so in that case
if a store says you must bring in reusable grocery bags it may not be because they even
chose to go green or claim they are green. It may be through activists and through regulations
and through popular pressure has forced a company in order to adopt a more environmental
practice. So, how can you spot greenwashing? Well, if you see a green ad you have to take
a look at the company as a whole. Can you easily find more information about their sustainable
business practices on their website for example? That would be a good place to go. When you
go there do they have a comprehensive environmental story that governs their entire business operation
in everything they do? You know, gut check here. Is the information that they are saying
believable? I mean, can you even as maybe a moderately educated environmental person
substantiate the green claims that you saw in the ad? If not then you have to be skeptical
of what they're saying. In order to actually do this you can just Google the name of the
company that you are working with and maybe add the word environment to the end of it
and see what pops up because a lot of times in that search you will find critical assessments
of things that the company is doing and some way of assessing whether or not what they
claim they are doing is actually being backed up by anything else. This is far from scientific,
but it's a real quick way for consumers to be able to figure out whether or not a clam
is true or not. Great. So, what else? When you analyze a greenwashing claim if you want
to go beyond just the Google approach, just throwing in the company name and environment,
you should think about two different aspects of a proposed greenwashing scenario. You should
think about first whether or not the claim is accurate and by that I mean is the manufacturer
making deceptive or misleading claims about the environmental impact of the action that
they're taking? First is it accurate. Secondly, is it meaningful? Even if the claim is true
does it make a difference in terms of what the organization is doing as a whole in the
context of the claim, etc., etc? Now, fortunately in 1998 the issue of straight up accuracy
was taking care of by regulations and directives that were put forward by the U.S., the problem
was solved by regulations that were put forward in the U.S., the problem was solved, by regulations
that were put forward by the United States Federal Trade Commission that put out pretty
good guidelines about what you can claim about the environmental impact of products and services.
These were the 1998 FTC "Green Guidelines," and this guide applies to environmental claims
in labeling, in advertising, in promotional materials and all other forms of marketing
whatever medium it is, online, off line, paper, whether directly or by implication and it
includes both the words and any symbols or brands or badges that they might put on, any
product brand names that they use, or any other means so it's comprehensive. You know,
when you dig into it it's pretty good and I kind of want to look at it a little bit
and give you someplace to go if you want to find out more. This is a screenshot of the
FTC's guidelines and you can see that there are 17 different sections covering everything
from general overview, general principles, all the way down to what people can say about
renewable materials or carbon offset credits, whether or not you can claim something that
is compostable, what are the guidelines about whether or not you can claim that for your
particular product. I would like to look through a few of those. First, starting off with the
general principles. There are four general principles that the FTC was trying to address
in creating these guidelines, and again this is about accuracy of a green claim. First
of all, qualifications and disclosures. The idea about qualifications and disclosures
was to prevent deceptive claims, qualifications and disclosures they should be clear, prominent
and understandable, and to make disclosures clear and prominent marketers should use plain
language, sufficiently large type. They should place their disclaimers in close proximity
to the qualified claim so if you have something on an ad there better be the qualifications
if necessary nearby. They should avoid making inconsistent statements or using distracting
elements that could undercut or contradict the disclosure. The second point is that they
have to make a distinction between the benefits of the product, the packaging of the product,
or the service that is behind the product and packaging. So, unless it's clear from
the context environmental marketing claims have to specify which of these it applies
to, product, packaging, service, portion of the product, portion of the package, portion
of the service, and in general if the environmental attribute applies to all but minor inconsequential
components of the product or package the marketer then doesn't need to qualify that claim because
it is assumed that it applies to everything. There are, however, exceptions to this general
principle. For example, if they make an unqualified recyclability claim and the presence of a
small incidental component makes the thing not 100% recyclable, if an organization claims
that a product is recyclable but there is something about that product that is small
but prevents it from practically actually being recyclable that would be deceptive.
Imagine you had some futuristic cardboard phone which, however, contains a battery that
you can't take out, you can't just drop that cardboard phone into a recycling bin because
the battery is in it and that would ruin its ability to be recyclable so you can't claim
that. The third covers the overstatement of environmental attributes. An environmental
marketing claim can't overstate either directly or by implication an environmental attribute
or benefit and so marketers shouldn't state or imply environmental benefits if those benefits
are negligible. Finally, the directives cover comparative claims. Those are the things where
you say that your environmental impact or the benefits of this product are better than
some other product. They have to be clear about exactly what they are comparing their
current formulation, their current product, their current packaging, their current service
to, and marketers have to have substantiation for the comparison. They have to have the
facts in order to claim that thing.