TSUI, J., 2020. The Negative Effects Of Corporate Greenwashing — Sea Going Green. [online] Sea Going Green. Available at: <https://www.seagoinggreen.org/blog/the-negative-effects-of-corporate-greenwashing> [Accessed 19 April 2020].
Green Washing
The greenwashing was suggested by my tutor and when I read some articles I was fascinated. I had never heard the word greenwashing, so I read two different articles, where one of them is the history of it and the other one is how to spot “greenwashing”.
on our times of using too many resources green-washing is where the organisations which contributes to that overuse of things, makes a claim that they are doing a job that is helping to save the earth. However, the UnSchool organisation believe that earth can’t be saved, but can be changed. When companies are doing green-washing, they are funding more time and money on marketing and claiming that their product or brand are sustainable. this meas that are harmless or safety to nature in word only instead of doing doing the hard work to make sure what they are doing is sustainable.
The description of greenwashing is about getting other people to believe that the company are doing the right thing by helping and protecting environment rather than what they are really doing it.
As an analogy, greenwashing is like a tree hugger says who said they care about environment, but it is a symbolic gesture, it doesn’t actually help the tree a corporation saying they care about the environment requires more than words.
Greenwashing can sometimes not be done on purpose and is because there is a look of education about what being sustainable means. However, It can be done completely on purpose. Either way, It’s misleading and does not make anything better. The resource is spent on the messaging and makes customers make the wrong choices and nothing gets better.
In one of the green washing cases there were cars made by Volkswagen. They had to confess they were cheating in discharge tests by using a vehicle with an unfair device. It is a proprietary software that can tell if the vehicle is doing the discharger testing and it can change the performance to decrease the discharge level. While selling the low-discharge feature of the vehicles in the market campaign. However, the truth is that the engine was releasing to 40x allowed limit for Nitrogen oxide pollutants. The court case is still ongoing and the Volkswagen lost a lot of their reputation.
There have been many cases of studies across all manufacturing. This show how not to do sustainability by discovering more green-washing. For example, the Meat Mega Giant Tyson have been in trouble for falsely claiming that the chicken is antibiotic-free. fossil fuel giant BP had a gas station that had been caught out for their green misdirection because they changed their name to Beyond Petroleum and put solar panels on their station. Coke-Cola did green washing as well because they got the health-conscious customers attention by tricking them saying that their coke drink has natural sugar in it, but it was not!
Futerra made a resource called the sin of green-washing, which grouped the ways companies greenwashing. it includes lying to making unscientific claims. Thinking how something is made from start to end of life (life cycle thinking) means people make good choices undersigning products. Designers need to know how the materials they use effect the environment. Much in-depth research. needs to be done to find the kindest to the planet ways to walk.
One of the most common green-washing issues is plastic. In the last 15 years 50% of all throwaway plastic has been made . The worst part is that 91% of plastic around the global has not been recycled. There are already have been a global plastic-in-the-ocean disaster and by 2050 we will see more plastic than fish in the ocean. They even have an image that was once a perfect beach, now it is being engulfed by plastic wreckage. The world is up in arms about this tragic by-product of our disposable lifestyle.
With all the issues of plastic waste, which causes someone to create free post-Disposable Activation kits and it is why they talked so much about the danger idea that recycling will solve all the problem. we heave made it normal to throwaway plastic and recycling can only do so much. We need to reuse. Bio plastics are not really the solution.
Bio plastics are a type of plastic made by bio-based polymers that are engineered to be made just like a normal petrochemical plastic but with different materials used. But in nearly every case, they need a special process to break it down (oxygen and sunlight and these are not always available in a landfill or the ocean for example).
Further to the end of the life management issue, they also need a lot of petrochemical in their production phase it mostly has a similar amount of plastic product still within them. However, the plastic bag takes a lot of time and other material to make them in the first place a “friendlier” plastic is not helpful at all, when they were not thinking of the lifecycle. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Started cracking down on bio plastic manufacturers in 2013 and warned the marketers in 2014.
It was the same case in Australia when plastic bag companys swapped with biodegradable plastic, which didn’t fully decay but instead it just broke down into smaller pieces unless it can be done in a digester specifically designedly to create the conditions for biodegradability. However, what it is really needed is a compostable bag, which is completely different thing. The claims they made for the bag led to the customer affairs watchdog fining them and telling them to stop selling the product, it was big fat lie. However, Australia has a complete guide of how to avoid being green washed.
As customers, we’ve got skills to tell which things are greenwashing or not. People can force the companies to create truly viable and sustainable products. Green washing is about misdirection by distracting others by showing something else that draws their attention away from what is really going on. The worst part about green washing is what they have seen so far is taking all the valuable space in the fight against the notable environmental issue like climate change, plastic ocean pollution, air pollution and global species extinction. However, the sad part about this is many companies do all this by accident where they do not have the expertise to understand what is environmentally beneficial, truly what is right or wrong
Right now, we are leading toward the most critical time in which more organisations and individual some trying to embrace environment design with zero waste living, and, banning the throwaway plastic, It is very important to quickly tell who is green washing right that instant and replace them with true sustainable practices both as employers and customers. The tools such as life-cycle assessment will help the organisation proved to make claims not, not guesses and produce sustainable products.
Fraser Thing 