Q: You mentioned in a previous article that most of us are now aware of greenwashing but I’m not so sure I am. How do I know if I’m encountering it?
A: With supermarket shelves lined with products that call themselves “eco-friendly,” “sustainable,” “degradable” and “made from recycled material,” it’s difficult to know what it all actually means – and whether it’s even true. You are quite right that greenwashing can be a tricky thing to recognise. The package might say “all-natural” but “chemicals are natural,” says Dr. Shane Timmons, a behavioral scientist and Senior Research Officer at the Economic & Social Research Institute in Dublin.
Timmons defines greenwashing as “any attempt to mislead the public about the environmental performance of a firm or a product.” With consumer demand for more environmentally friendly products increasing, there are suspicions that greenwashing has been getting worse, because “where demand increases, supply follows.” A study done a few years ago by the European Commission, looking to world-wide advertisements for food and drink products primarily, found that “over half of environmental claims could be classified as misleading,” or claims that are vague or ambiguous.
“It’s so difficult for consumers to evaluate whether a claim is true,” Timmons says. “You need to know the full lifecycle of the product to know whether it’s actually sustainable,” which, he adds, “puts the incentive for the company on making a claim they can get away with over taking on the costs of improving those processes.”
On top of this complexity, Timmons and his colleagues ran a study training people to spot greenwashing. They found that the more knowledge consumers have, the more skeptical they become, of both greenwashed and genuine products. “It made people skeptical toward genuine claims as well.”
New EU regulations, which will be taken up by the Irish government in the next year and a half, aim to put an end to a lot of the confusion. “If they want to make claims, they have to be specific about them,” Timmons says. They can’t say a water bottle is made from recycled material; they have to say what percentage is recycled material. Information also has to be available publicly on their website, and larger fines are coming for those who breach the regulation. “Claims will need to take into account the full lifecycle of the product, from how it is initially manufactured to how it gets into the shelves in the shop.”
There are already some watchdogs in place, including the Advertising Standards Authority. They recently took on the National Dairy Council after complaints were made about their claims to sustainability.
And some forms of greenwashing may not come under the new EU regulations, Timmons points out. For example, in the case of products considered to be harmful to the environment, if one is slightly better than the competition, perhaps using a different material, you can claim it’s environmentally friendly even when it isn’t: it’s just better than the even worse. That SUV you bought with “eco-friendly” on the back doesn’t make it eco-friendly.
Similarly, “flying is one of most environmentally harmful actions a consumer can take,” Timmons says. “If you try to book with google, it will tell you which flights have lower emissions on average, but the calculation is completely opaque and it tries to send a signal that you can fly in a more sustainable way,” saying nothing about the so-called less sustainable. “The best thing to do is not take the flight,” he adds.
THINGS TO WATCH FOR
While it might feel like a fast one is being pulled on us, Timmons does have some advice for how to shop with an eye to greenwashing tactics.
First, look for the finer details, “the more specific the better.” If the packing says 100% compostable, “you can probably put faith in it because it’s talking about one specific aspect of the product or service and putting a number on it.” Specific claims are the kind that “if they are not true, they are open to advertising authority.”
Another trick is to be wary of more familiar brands. We’re much more accustomed to greenwashed brands than genuine ones, and “with familiarity, comes trust,” leaving behind those actually trying to be green. “The companies that are making genuine claims tend to be smaller and less well-known,” adds Timmons.
A further form of greenwashing that might be difficult to avoid, even with new regulations, is what’s known as “executional greenwashing,” or “using nature imagery to promote your product and service when it may not have a connection to your product at all.” Think of an advertisement for that SUV driving through a stunning, colorful mountain scape. “The reality is, you’re going 20 miles per hour through traffic,” he says, but studies show people make the “implicit connection” between the product and the environment.
With a landscape ripe for confusing us, Timmons knows there will be loopholes but has some optimism as the new regulations arrive, limiting vague, often misleading claims. In the meantime, we might be wary of those “all-natural” name-brands which say nothing about how they were made and look a bit more closely at the smaller producer who really does have the good of the earth in mind.
