Greenwashing

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The greenwashing of toxic consumer products Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

That's what this article is all about: "Greenwashing" or the practice of corporations claiming their products are green when, in reality, they're not at all impressive as eco-friendly products. I recently saw paper plates positioned as "eco-friendly biodegradable tableware." I remember when we used to just call them "paper plates" and we avoided buying them because we wanted to save the trees. But today, paper plates are positioned as green living products. Fascinating how things shift so quickly, isn't it? (Click here to see my CounterThink Cartoon on this topic...

Nowhere is greenwashing more overhyped than in the ethanol biofuels industry, where gullible consumers are being told that we can simply farm our way out of an oil crisis by -- get this -- converting most of our food into fuel! Ethanol from corn is so energy inefficient that it takes almost exactly one barrel of oil from somewhere else to farm, harvest, process and produce one barrel of oil equivalent energy from corn. In other words, it's just a massive U.S. energy shell game with absolutely no net gain in energy production, but a huge net loss in food production.

Most consumer products are highly toxic for people, animals and nature, and before long, nearly all of them will likely carry some kind of greenwashing claim that declares how good they are for the environment. It's the Big Lie of consumerism, and the American economy depends so much on the continued purchasing of throwaway products that it simply cannot survive unless people keep buying -- and tossing -- products that are mostly harmful to the environment.

The Earth is being poisoned, day by day, by greenwashing corporations and gullible consumers, and it's only a matter of time before it all comes back to bite us so hard that we become a race of chemically-induced genetic mutants.

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

Consumers who've spent their whole lives grabbing the worst chemical cleansers around now have an easy way to adopt a new Method, sr Greenwashing As you might surmise, greenwashing is the act of painting a green facade on something to cover up what's underneath. The term emerged during the 1990s, when corporations began to see the value of appearing socially and environmentally responsible despite not yet having brought their practices into line with their new ethical public images.

Those who seem to be covering something up generally don't pass the greenwashing test. How can you tell if a company's green messages are authentic? Here are some hints. You should be wary of an advertisement or corporate statement for which any of the following ring true: ¦ The claims are vague —using turns of phrase like "natural," "environmentally friendly," or "good for the planet" —and aren't backed up with specific facts. Method Home products. ¦ The product is billed as having no environmental impact (pretty much everything humans produce has some environmental impact).

Most consumers don't adequately understand the environmental impacts of their purchases anyway, and many companies have been reluctant to promote their environmental good deeds or the environmental improvements in their products for fear that their lack of perfection will lead them to be criticized or accused of "greenwashing" [see Consuming Responsibly, p. 38]. A growing number of companies really do have good environmental stories to tell. But even a pristine ecological track record may not bring in substantial consumer demand.

For all its slick public relations, SFI has yet to shake its reputation as an industry greenwashing group. The tip-off? Every last member of the AF&PA, from International Paper on down, has won certification, despite their widespread practices of clear-cutting and raising single-species tree farms, sz Investing in Sustainable Timber mmmm Spencer Beebe and Bettina von Ha-gen of Ecotrust are committed to the kind of long-term ecologically and socially responsible forestry that is independently certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back Michele Simon See book keywords and concepts

Years ago, the environmental movement coined the term "greenwashing" to describe how corporations use public relations to make themselves appear environmentally friendly. Today, nutrition advocates need their own moniker for a similar trend among major food companies—I like to call it "nutriwashing." As the food industry finds itself increasingly under attack for promoting unhealthy foods, one of its major defense strategies is to improve, or promise to improve, the nutritional content of its food.

Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton See book keywords and concepts

In the perverse world of corporate public relations, propagandizing and lobbying against environmental protection is called "environmental" or "green" PR. "Greenwashing" is a more accurate pejorative now commonly used to describe the ways that polluters employ deceptive PR to falsely paint themselves an environmentally responsible public image, while covering up their abuses of the biosphere and public health. In the years since the publication of Silent Spring, corporate public relations experts have learned how to tame and turn aside the activism that it spawned.

US businesses spend an estimated $1 billion a year on the services of anti-environmental PR professionals and on "greenwashing" their corporate image.9 O'Dwyer's PR Services termed the environmental struggle "the life and death PR battle of the 1990s."10 It is a battle that is being waged on many fronts: television, the printed press, grade school classrooms, community meeting halls, the boards of directors of mainstream environmental groups, journalism conferences, and talk radio.

The term "corporate greenwashing" hadn't yet been coined, but the problem already existed. "Political and business leaders once hoped that they could turn the environmental movement into a massive anti-litter campaign," shouted Hayes in his historic speech. "Industry has turned the environmental problem over to its public relations men. . . . We have learned not to believe the advertising."37 Two decades later, however, Gaylord Nelson himself helped turn Earth Day into a corporate commodity.

Nelson agreed. greenwashing, he said, is no problem at all, "not even on the map. If a corporation is moving to be green, that's just fine. Many of today's corporate leaders participated in [the first] Earth Day in college; it turned them into environmentalists. I'm glad to see corporations joining in. If they try to coopt Earth Day, they'll just help spread environmental propaganda."40 Nelson also defended Earth Day USA's shocking decision to hire Shandwick PR—a leading anti-environmental greenwasher—to help plan, coordinate and execute the twenty-fifth Earth Day celebration.

In the end, the "inclusive," pro-corporate strategy of Finch, Anderson and Nelson fell apart when media coverage disclosed the corporate greenwashing behind Earth Day USA. Unwanted publicity led to internal dissension and the eventual breakup of the organization's board of directors. Efforts to involve the Clinton White House in raising millions of dollars from corporations to fund a huge event on the DC mall also fell apart under reporters' scrutiny.51 Begging for Mercy The whimpering demise of Earth Day USA epitomized the crisis that had come over the environmental movement by 1995.

In 1991, in the face of a mounting campaign by Greenpeace for a "global phase-out" of chlorine, the Clorox Company turned to Ketchum Public Relations, a premier greenwashing firm. Ketchum's draft plan outlined strategies for dealing with a number of "worst-case scenarios," but failed to plan for the worst of all possible scenarios—the possibility that some conscientious objector would leak the plan to Greenpeace, which in turn provided it to us.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.