In 1985, one company decided to profit off of the environmental fervor that had pervaded the 70s.
They ran a series of ads like this one. The ads were part of the “People Do” campaign,
which highlighted how workers were changing landscapes to aid local wildlife. The campaign
was such a success that it ran well into the 1990s, and the advertisements even won an Effie
advertising award for green eco-marketing in 1991. But these commercials had a sinister purpose. One
that masked the environmental pollution and destruction of the company that made
them. Today, we’re going to unpack so-called corporate responsibility and greenwashing:
what it means, how commercials and tactics like the “People Do” campaign work,
and why corporations like the one that made those commercials don’t care about us or the planet.
This video is sponsored by CuriosityStream,
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What Companies Claim
The late 1980s weren’t a good time for Chevron’s environmental track record. In 1985, one of the
company’s refineries had just been exposed for contaminating the local groundwater with millions
of barrels of oil leaks. Then three years later, the company paid $550,000 to settle a lawsuit
brought in connection with toxic emissions at its plant in Richmond, Virginia. Then again in 1991,
it pleaded guilty to violating both the clean water and clean air acts, paying millions of
dollars in damages. So, the fossil fuel giant decided to do something about their tattered
public image. Starting in 1985, Chevron shelled out around 5 to 10 million dollars a year to
create the “People Do” campaign. That’s right, the company behind those nature filled commercials
was the oil corporation Chevron. Throughout the campaign, Chevron payed an estimated $200,000
to make each 30-second ad that marketed initiatives like their butterfly preserve.
A preserve that cost just $5,000 a year to maintain. A mere glance at the price tag reveals
where the oil corporation’s motives lie: their public image and their profits. But this type of
ad campaign is common for corporations, especially large multinationals. Fast forward to today,
and greenwashing, or using environmental rhetoric to boost sales or brand image while simultaneously
polluting or destroying the environment, pervades marketing campaigns. From oil giants like
ExxonMobil, to Home Depot, to Nestle, right on down to Instagram ads on your feed.
Each of these companies have a vested stake in misleading you into believing
that the product and ultimately the company is aiding in social and environmental change,
but when it comes to greenwashing there is a lot more at stake than getting misled.
Why Companies Greenwash
From behind his desk in the economics department of the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman, the
father of neoliberal economics, penned an op-ed for the New York Times. The year was 1970, and
government regulation was trendy in the halls of congress, passing numerous laws seeking to protect
environmental and human well-being. Friedman saw it differently. In his view, these regulations
were not only bogging down corporations, but they were also forcing businesses to do something that
they were not meant to do. In his view, the only social responsibility of corporations
is to turn a profit for their shareholders. Regulations, according to Friedman, just
slowed down the machine of progress. This is the core of neoliberalism, a theory of deregulation
and free-market business that is foundational to American and global enterprise today: Profit above
all else. Which is why greenwashing and claims of corporate responsibility
must be seen less as a harmless misdirection, and more as tools essential to the capitalist quest
of expanding corporate profits. Under capitalism, a corporation’s primary goal is to generate profit
for shareholders and the capitalist class. To do otherwise, to carve out space for the environment
or god forbid the working class, would mean fewer investors, less profit, and ultimately
bankruptcy. If, however, a company like Nestle, H&M, or Chevron can be seen as working towards
the common good through PR campaigns and savvy marketing without having to fundamentally change
their business operations, then they’ve protected or even expanded their profits.
But there are also a couple of other reasons why so-called Corporate Social Responsibility
and its offshoot, greenwashing, are so insidious. For one, it rewrites the narrative of what
change and climate action means. BP’s carbon footprint campaign is a perfect example of this.
By redirecting public attention from their oil spills and emissions back towards our own
personal carbon footprint, the oil giant made climate action more about individual endeavors
than corporate malfeasance. We see this again and again, such as with H&M’s campaigns that co-op
phrases like “eco-warrior” and “climate crusader” to get you to buy more clothes. Essentially, these
marketing schemes make us think that we can buy our way out of social problems, when, in reality,
the very companies we are buying from are causing those social issues. The second way greenwashing
is so threatening is that it lulls us into a false sense of security. If we believe that corporations
are changing for the good, then we can sit back and let them do their work. This is exactly what
Chevron’s “People Do” campaign was all about. Indeed, Chao Gunter, director of the Public
Media Center in San Francisco, notes that through their misleading ads, “Chevron implies that maybe
we don’t need a regulatory framework because the oil companies are taking care of it.” In short, if
corporations can trick us into trusting them to do good, they can do whatever they want. Greenwashing
allows for businesses to continue their destructive practices by tossing scraps to us and
claiming they’re giving us a whole meal. Because any real change, any effective climate action,
means changing the paradigm. Real solutions to the climate crisis, like degrowth, building
with local materials, agroecology farming, and ecosocialism, all spell disaster for corporations
because it means shifting priorities away from profits and towards people and planet.
Regardless of what these companies say, their actions speak louder than their words.
Why Corporations Will Never Be Our Savior
Since Chevron started running their greenwashed “People Do” campaign
they’ve racked up countless instances of environmental destruction and exploitation.
In 1988, while their ads were blanketing TVs and magazines, Chevron’s El Segundo refinery leaked
an estimated 252 million gallons of oil into the surrounding groundwater. And to this day, Chevron
refuses to clean up an oil spill so egregious it came to be known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.”
From 1964 to 1992, Texaco, which is now owned by Chevron, dumped 72 billion liters of toxic water
polluting a 1,700 mile area in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest and tainting the water supply
for the indigenous communities living near the oil wells. But Chevron isn’t the only corporation
claiming they’re doing good while they quietly destroy our surroundings. Home Depot, for example,
has had to pay a $28 million settlement because it illegally dumped toxic waste in California
despite running marketing campaigns aimed at consumers to recycle their homemaking materials.
And Nestle, with its claims of sustainable water and packaging, is anything but sustainable. First
of all, wrapping water in plastic is causing a single-use plastic waste crisis, but to add
insult to injury, Nestle’s subsidiaries like, Arrowhead Water, which sources its water partly
from California springs, an area notoriously racked with a mega-drought, have been repeatedly
accused of sucking aquifers dry wherever they operate. These exploitative corporate practices
reveal that to make the most profit they can, corporations try to externalize as many costs
as they can. And if they can say that they aren’t externalizing costs while they actually are, then
they've won… but at the cost of the planet and the people slaving away under brutal conditions.
How We Change:
Greenwashing and corporate social responsibility are tactics. Plain and simple. They are used as
ways to distract from the metaphorical boot on our throats and on the throat of our planet. These
misleading marketing campaigns are just another example of the resilience of capitalism. For
as long as capitalism continues to reign, so too will the laborious task of deciphering misleading
messaging. Capitalism is the problem, not our buying habits. Think about how hard it is to find
“sustainable” goods, and even after all that hard work it’s still difficult to figure out
whether the company is telling the truth. Here’s the thing. There is no ethical consumption under
capitalism. But the reason why there is no ethical consumption under capitalism is that there are
no ethical corporations under capitalism. Even B-corporations like Patagonia are still driven
by the profit motive and the bottom line. All this means that to end greenwashing,
to create economies where materials and goods are crafted to fulfill uses rather than to fill
wallets and make profits, we must end capitalism. But building the power to do so, especially in
imperial core countries like the United States, is a multi-decade process, and the climate
crisis demands action now. Which is why we need harm-reduction strategies that use available tools
right now. These look like forcing corporate transparency through lawsuits, third-party
auditing, and using regulating bodies to actually enforce regulations as a way to make corporations
live up to their promises. But importantly, these harm-reduction strategies must mesh with the
longer term work of building a post-capitalist world. One that envisions an economy built on
truths, on real environmental stewardship, and on human and community well-being.
Of all the big multinationals professing to be climate saviors, Nestle is certainly one of the
worst. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to fully dive into Nestle’s greenwashing campaigns
in this video. So instead, I made a little bonus part about Nestle’s environmental practices and
I’ve uploaded that section as an extended edition of this video on the streaming platform my creator
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