Thumbs Down to Greenwashing. And Pinkwashing. And…
More companies, brands, and products than ever are cultivating environmentally friendly images. According to the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice, 79% of North American stores saw an increase in the number of green products between 2007/8 and 2009. Yet how true are the claims being made by product labeling and accompanying public relations?
For years now, environmentalists, media critics and others have decried “greenwashing,” or the practice of making inflated claims about the environmental actions of products and brands. Yet it appears that the practice is as widespread as ever. Surveying over 2200 products in North America, TerraChoice recently found that 98% of them committed at least one action they deemed ethically dubious, such as failing to provide sufficient proof of ecological claims, making vague or meaningless claims, or offering fake third party certification of their “green” behaviors. The problem was especially acute in the categories of children’s products, cosmetics, and cleaning products.
As the New York Times has reported, the Federal Trade Commission may be poised to crack down on greenwashing in response to the flood of green marketing initiatives. Over the past couple of years, the agency has been reviewing whether to tighten up its “green guides” spelling out rules concerning the use by marketers of words like “recyclable” and “biodegradable.” Whereas the agency’s enforcement activity languished under President George W. Bush (not a single claim was filed about “green” claims), seven have already been filed during the Obama administration’s tenure. In one case last year, Kmart agreed to change how it marketed paper plates it had initially presented as “bio-degradable.”
We are opposed to the practice of greenwashing. It’s inaccurate and therefore not consistent with the Council’s statement of principles. It’s also bad for business, feeding public cynicism about media and corporate communications. In our age of social media, stakeholders demand transparency and are more aware and outraged than ever when companies violate this imperative. For evidence of that, look at how public concern about environmental claims has become generalized over the past several years, spreading into other focal points of Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns. Activists now target “pinkwashing,” or the use of breast cancer campaigns to cover up actions that seem to contribute to cancer. One recent article in the Huffington Post, for instance, took bottled water producers to task for “pinkwashing” their products. On its website thinkbeforeyoupink.org, the group Breast Cancer Action calls for “more transparency and accountability by companies that take part in breast cancer fundraising” and more critical thinking by consumers about “pink ribbon promotions.”
Members of the public today associate greenwashing, pinkwashing, and the like with the disciplines of marketing and PR. That’s unfortunate—and we should be offended. We should strive to promote transparency, authenticity, good works, and ethical behavior in all of our Corporate Social Responsibility programs. Let’s avoid the “lipstick on a pig” mentality by doing good things and then telling people about it. If anything, companies don’t talk enough about the actual good things they do; in one poll of employees, 24% reported that sustainability factored as a top priority in business decisions, yet only 17% said that their companies talked often about their sustainability efforts to employees. Meanwhile, 75% of consumers in another poll reported that it was “important for companies to be ‘socially responsible.’”
If a green program is covering up dubious conduct, clients and their agencies should strive to change either the program or the conduct. As Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Cantor has argued, branding should “start with an authenticity test.” We’d argue that the same holds true for Corporate Social Responsibility programs. At all points, question whether the program reflects the truth. Pushing back the tide of greenwashing takes effort, but over time it will help produce better communications, less skeptical audiences, and a healthier PR industry.
Well said, Kathy. I think part of the problem actually arises, ironically, from when companies view their greening efforts as CSR programs rather than as business strategies. For that reason, we don’t lump our environmental work into our CSR offering.
The other irony is that, as the employee survey you cite shows, companies really are doing positive things — for business reasons — in creating products that are better for the environment while reducing their own (negative) impact on it. They just aren’t very good at branding them in a way that makes it clear to their audiences.
Ann Barlow
Director, GreenPepper
Peppercom
[...] closer. This action might have taken away the entire issue. In addition, if the company had taken responsibility for the issue and started with the truth, then the problem would have lessened because it might [...]
[...] companies, but aren’t exactly sure what social responsibility is. In a complementary blog post (http://blog.prfirms.org/2010/04/thumbs-down-to-greenwashing-and-pinkwashing-and/#more-204), Kathy Cripps describes how companies are going overboard with “green” branding, especially [...]