In the United States, we are on constant alert for consumerism, being critical about how it affects us. This cynical awareness permeates our perceptions of most goods, enforcing corporate social responsibility in the political sphere. However, using this to their advantage, companies are beginning to condition consumers by appealing through serious, globally-concerning and completely inaccurate claims, otherwise known as greenwashing.
Greenwashing is when a company purposefully advertises its product or packaging to seem better for the environment than they actually are. Greenwashing has become an epidemic, as many companies have decided to hop on this bandwagon, which is proving to be a new cash cow for corporations. Sixty percent of consumers say that they paid more for packaging that advertised environmental sustainability.
Greenwashing is a major problem. It takes advantage of the public by deceiving the customer, as the product typically does not live up to the promises of its labeling. In fact, in some cases, these products have been proven to be worse for the environment.
In one case study, Nestlé was held responsible for using many stereotypical greenwashing strategies such as being too vague, not approaching numerical goals, and expecting what they called a “collective approach,” which prevented the company from taking accountability for their own involvement.
It was found during a beach clean-up in the Philippines that 17% of the litter was from Nestlé products. If Nestlé as a company truly was concerned about pollution, they would have to completely change their business practices to protect the environment.
Plastic continues to be one of our biggest sustainability issues to date, yet Nestlé continues to produce plastic, which ends up polluting our beaches. The company claims to have aspirations to use completely recyclable products by 2025, but these goals don’t seem attainable considering how they are still a major cause for pollution.
This raises many questions on how this type of fallacy-based advertisement poses an ethical dilemma as well.
False advertisements that are crafted around faulty claims about a product without any real scientific backing are common. This is especially problematic when talking about the world we live in; something we all should be doing our best to maintain and preserve. Seeing labels that include words like “sustainable,” “made from recycled materials” and “eco-conscious” when that simply is not true is sad and shocking.
With rising concerns on climate change, many people across the world are starting to be more conscientious of their carbon footprint, and they expect for companies to do the same. In just five years, sales of consumer packaged goods advertising sustainability in North America rose by 30%, reaching an estimated $278.9 billion in 2022.
Calling these companies to action is good and ethical at its core, but underneath all of the flashy names, these products are still the same. All in all, nothing is really changing, except that we are now being lied to even more frequently as consumers. It is essential to start to hold companies accountable when they advertise “environmentally-friendly” products; fact check them and shame them when they aren’t making fact-based claims.
One way we can look out for greenwashing is by watching for companies that claim to invest in carbon offsets. Carbon offsets are when a company invests in trying to balance out their carbon footprint that they create through their emission of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gasses. Some companies claim to invest in carbon offsets including planting trees or building renewable energy projects.
Carbon offsets are controversial because the offsets are simply putting us back at square one. They aren’t really dismissing or removing the gasses that are being emitted into the atmosphere, they are just putting a theoretical band-aid on the damage that has already been done. Or, perhaps more accurately, they are akin to refraining from prodding an open wound, merely hoping it will clot on its own. These companies aren’t doing anything to change or lessen their emissions.
The impact of carbon offsets are also not usually clear to consumers because there is a lack of transparency surrounding what carbon offsets really are. Activists have also found that companies have decades-long timelines to reach their offset goals, meaning they are constantly emitting more harmful gasses than they are able to fully offset. It is unknown when these companies will actually start to see a slow in their greenhouse emissions.
Though there are deadlines being set by the United Nations’ Paris Agreement–which states that global emissions should be reduced by 45% by 2030–there currently aren’t any repercussions for companies partaking in greenwashing other than petty fines. It is up to us as consumers to continue to hold these companies accountable by limiting our consumption of their products.
