Greenwashing is a term coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in his 1986 essay on the hotel industry. During a vacation he noticed a hotel placing signs to encourage their customers to reuse towels to save the environment, when in reality the hotel put little effort toward this goal; it was just a strategy to lower laundering costs.
Today greenwashing has evolved and spread but at its core has remained the same. Greenwashing is the use of imagery and buzzwords to suggest a product or company is more environmentally friendly than they really are. A common example of this is the picturesque lakes and waterfalls on the packaging of water bottles next to claims of reducing waste with smaller plastic caps. They ease the conscious of well-intentioned consumers who don’t realize that, regardless, manufacturing of plastic water bottles releases greenhouse emissions and is all around bad for the planet. In the end, the strategies employed by companies who greenwash aim to drive profit and sales rather than save our planet and its resources.
There are companies out there that genuinely want to make a difference or at least want to attract consumers by employing ethical and sustainable business practices. In order to identify these companies, it helps to become more aware of the industries you’re supporting. One way to recognize blatant greenwashing is to look out for unregulated, fluffy buzzwords. Clean, pure, and natural are descriptors that have no defined, inforced standards industries use to measure them, but they sure do sound ideal. Even the word organic can be used to deceive buyers since only agriculture products require the Canada Organic logo to show they’re regulated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. This allows textiles, skin care, and cleaning products to fall through the cracks when it comes to organic regulation.
Another telltale sign of greenwashing is the lack of evidence available to back up the company’s claim, or if there is evidence, it’s vague. Nestlé will boast that their water comes from protected springs, but there’s nothing to elaborate on what that means. Amazon advertised that the implementation of “frustration-free” packaging in 2017 reduced their packaging waste by 16 per cent, but they didn’t state the actual volume of waste still produced.
Companies also oversell the idea of recycling rather than reducing, which would hurt their number of sales. H&M is a fast fashion clothing brand with a garment recycling program; for every bag of textiles donated you’ll receive a discount to use in store. They use impressively high numbers to show how many tonnes of textiles they’ve collected for recycling in a given year but don’t detail what happens to the clothing once it leaves their warehouse. In fact, they might not know themselves. More often than not, recycling clothing is costly and difficult because they’re made of blended fibres that reduce the quality of recycled material and don’t break down easily. A majority of the clothing collected from this program could end up in third world countries that buy them in bulk, where they’ll sit in landfills out of view from North American consumers. Ironically, H&M’s 2018 sustainability report also shows that in 2018 they themselves used only 1.4 per cent recycled material in the manufacturing of their garments.
While there are laws in place to ensure companies make accurate claims about their products, greenwashing is a common and insidious practice. To stay on top, be on the lookout for empty buzzwords, vague claims lacking evidence, and the boasting of recycling rather than reducing. We all want to do our part to save the environment, but don’t let yourself be fooled by clever packaging and wistful imagery; be a friend to the planet by becoming more aware of who and what you support.
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
