Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [119]
Since Citizen Group had been in existence long before the concept of corporate social responsibility and sustainability had become fashionable, I asked Raj if he felt any resentment. “Not at all,” he answered. “If anything the sustainability momentum surprised me in a positive sense because it’s going to require that kind of concentrated energy and egoless effort to make systemic change. Competition and coopetition are good things for the movement.”
But what about the companies that are less than sincere in their sustainability efforts? “Well, lots of corporations are embarking on green, but the depth of their commitment and the pace should be questioned.” For instance? “The greenwashers. The instances where companies with bad records do ads that tout their token sustainability story to take the edge off others. Like Pepsi selling Sun Chips [where one of its eight factories is solar powered] yet still mostly selling sugar water with corn syrup. Or Toyota constantly promoting the Prius, which is good and forward, but how do they explain the Tundra? Then there is flat-out greenwashing.”
According to the Web site the Greenwashing Index, the term “greenwashing” is a version of “whitewashing,” or painting over a problem. Its origins can be traced to a 1986 essay by the environmentalist Jay Westerveld about the hotel industry’s practice of placing green “save the planet” cards in bathrooms, urging reuse of guest towels. Westerveld contended that profit, not social responsibility, was at the core of such efforts.
Today, it’s hard not to watch a television program, read a magazine or newspaper, or look at a billboard or bus kiosk without having a green message thrown in your face. Editorially, virtually every mainstream magazine and news program regularly produces some version of “The Green Issue” that is filled with ads for such unlikely products as SUVs, dishwashers, oil companies, coal companies, and corn chip makers, all touting their social responsibility and claiming to have saved some aspect of the rain forest, the ozone layer, and the planet.
For instance, the Greenwashing Index, which is run by Enviro-Media Social Marketing with the help of the University of Oregon, regularly monitors ads and allows people to vote online about their degree of truth. Not surprisingly, a billboard that reads, “Coal, Pennsylvania’s Clean Green Energy,” got particularly low grades for truth and accuracy. A commercial featuring Kermit the Frog singing “It’s not easy being green” for the Ford Escape hybrid SUV got mixed reviews because, while it was at least promoting a hybrid vehicle, it was still the product of a big-three auto company, and the truck was shown smack in the middle of a fragile forest environment. In a more heinous example cited by the Wall Street Journal, the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority concluded that commercials by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council misleadingly claimed the industry was good for the environment:
In one ad, which appeared on satellite channels across Europe, Asia and the U.S., a man jogs through a natural rain forest, interspersed with shots of palm-oil plantations and wildlife. “Malaysia palm oil. Its trees give life and help our planet breathe,” the voice-over declared. The problem: Oil-palm plantations, which produce a vegetable oil used in products such as margarine and soap, have often been planted in illegally cleared natural rain forests. In neighboring Indonesia, where Malaysian palm-oil companies own large operations, plantation development is destroying the natural habitat of species such as the Sumatran elephant.
The same Journal article reported that in Norway, unlike in the United States, the government has made it illegal for any car advertisement to claim that its vehicles are “green,” “clean,” or “environmentally friendly” for the simple reason that “all car production leads to more, not fewer, carbon emissions.