Greenwashing is when large companies and corporations attempt to redirect their consumers’ attention from the 99.9% of their shifty, shady practices to the 0.1% of things that they’re doing great. It is all about manipulating the consumer to pick their product over another by claiming they are “sustainable”. The goal is to trick the consumer into believing that a company is being sustainable and ethical, when in fact they are not. Now you know what greenwashing is.. How does one point it out and avoid it? Be on the lookout for these RED FLAGS!
If the tag of a product is full of buzzwords, be cautious! This is easy to spot because they’re usually very vague and they really don’t communicate anything. ‘Bio’, ‘green’. ‘organic’, ‘eco’, ‘pure’, ‘natural’,…They really mean nothing if there’s nothing to back them up. Do you know those annoying questions in high school exams asking you to justify your answer? This is the same. If they can claim they’re eco-whatever, they should be able to say why. Usually, a quick Google search about the product or just reading the small print will clear things up.
If you’re about to buy anything with a packaging that shows a pristine lake, a big mountain with a snowy mountaintop, or a green valley full of lilies, know that you miiiight be greenwashed. Bottled water uses these images a lot. And needless to say, plastic + these landscapes are not compatible. I’ve also seen this in many car commercials, which is as well pretty out of place if you think about it.
Try to see the bigger picture. Maybe one campaign convinces you of the greenness of a company. But ask yourself twice: is that really the case? Is sustainability one of the core values of the company? Or they’re looking for attention and sales? A dead giveaway is when a company claims to be ULTRA-HYPER-SUPER eco-friendly. When a brand is that loud about being green, chances are it’s not. You’d be shocked to know that some of the greenest companies out there actually admit their imperfections – a great example is Everlane in their mission statement. It’s called savoir faire ladies and gents. You can learn more about this in my post about how to know if a fashion brand is truly sustainable.
If the brand promises that it’ll plant 3 trees for each purchase, be careful. Ok, they might plant trees, but who can guarantee that the brand is taking care of the environment in other ways? If they plant those trees, but on the other side they use intensively fossil fuels, excessive plastic, toxic materials,… They’re actually not doing anything good for the environment. We can also include brands that trumpet their investment in carbon offsets. Let’s get this straight: carbon offsets are GREAT, but if we don’t reduce our emissions in the first place, they’re as effective as putting a bandaid over a broken leg.
Sometimes the type of product itself can tell you whether it’s sustainable or not. Plastic water bottles: not eco-friendly. Fuel cars: not eco-friendly. Fast fashion: not eco-friendly. Objectively, some products are unsustainable by nature. So any claim about their eco-friendliness is probably bs.
In some cases, companies may not know they’re greenwashing. Sometimes their efforts to make a greener brand are genuine, but they find themselves ‘unintentionally’ greenwashing – and I’d hate to criticize that! Other times, at least in my opinion, there’s a grey area where we can consider that a brand is greenwashing, but not really. So that leaves us in the fence most often than not. For example, Nordstrom getting into the second-hand fashion business. Are they just a big company taking advantage of the growth of the sustainable fashion movement in order to sell more and use sustainability as a marketing tool? Or are they really making an effort and trying to move to a more sustainable business model?