Green

By Mae Wright

Green is such a versatile colour. It's my second favourite colour (after purple); it symbolises nature and the natural world. Green also represents tranquillity, good luck, health, and jealousy. It's an easy colour to live with.

Green is also a versatile adjective. Merriam-Webster provides ten different definitions just for the adjectival form of green. It can mean the colour between yellow and blue on the light spectrum, covered in foliage, pleasant, youthful, unripe, envious, sickly, naive, unprocessed and related to environmentalism. 

I want to talk about that tenth definition:

10a: often capitalized: relating to or being an environmentalist political movement b: concerned with or supporting environmentalism  c: tending to preserve environmental quality (as by being recyclable, biodegradable, or non-polluting)

Being green and supporting green ideas is becoming more mainstream. It used to be a fringe ideology, adopted by hippies and drop-outs. As green ideas have entered the mainstream, a new phenomenon known as greenwash has emerged: adopting only the veneer of being green or supporting green ideas.

How can we tell the real thing from a thin wash of 'green' over otherwise unchanged ideas and products?


First, some background. As we've re-learned how humans fit within and impact on our life-sustaining ecology, many of us have started to question and change the decades long practices of waste, overuse, pollution, and wanton destruction. Not all people, by a long way. Some people maintain their belief in their right to dominate and use everything on the planet for their wants and whims; the old biblical 'dominion over the earth' idea.

But many people are concerned about the negative impacts of this world view. The exploding world population, Western countries' colossal over-consumption particularly of frivolous items (e.g. Fabergé eggs, plastic bottled water and Styrofoam take-away containers) and our prolific production of pollutants and poisons are all starting to show their effect. It's worrying.

As part of that concern, in Western societies (I can't talk about non-Western countries) people are more often looking more closely at what they buy: whether it's safe, healthy, recycled, natural, environmentally friendly, green. Since the 1980s (at least) we've seen the emergence of the 'green consumer' - people who factor into their consumer choices the environmental impacts and their own health and well-being.

A green consumer is:

​a customer who wants to buy things that have been produced in a way that protects the natural environment.

Here's a Venn diagram of what makes someone a green consumer. Green consumers want products and services that reflect green values and green processes (the green foundation). Green products are then promoted through green events, green words and green colour or image (the marketing). (Click image for larger version.)

In the past, green consumers had to go to small speciality stores. Not only was being a 'green consumer' more effort, it entailed higher costs. Thus, the 'green market' tended to be limited to more affluent people. Companies worked this out pronto; this example, from a 2013 article:

The best 'green' customers are people with more money to spend. As a result, the most promising products for 'greening' tend to be at the higher end of the market. The most promising outlets for green products are retail stores frequented by better-off shoppers.

  

The mainstream retailers have taken notice of the affluent and growing green-consumer market. Over the last decade, the large chains have begun to feature 'environmental' products or create special 'green' sections as well as sourcing more 'green' products at the scale they need for supply. This seems like a positive step; with economies of scale, it brings the cost down.

Like all people, green consumers rely the product labelling or advertising for information about ingredients, production, packaging, etc., to make their choice. It's a central plank of capitalism that consumers make informed choices and consumer choice drives markets and pricing. 

It's now almost ubiquitous for advertising to talk up the 'green' credentials of products and services. It would be comforting to think that the large producers and mainstream stores had reflected on their values and concluded that products needed to change.

But, unsurprisingly, no. It's more that the growing interest in buying 'green' has been recognised as a great marketing angle to generate profit. Under the advertising through 'green' events or activities, green colour and green words, many products have absolutely no foundation of green values or production processes.

Advertising that uses events, colour and words without the foundation of green values or production process is how I spot greenwash.

The term greenwashing was coined by Jay Westervelt in 1986 in an article criticising hotel cards asking visitors to reuse towels to 'save the planet' as really only about profit. He highlighted other seemingly 'environmental' acts with no or minimal 'green' benefits. It's a very handy word, which Merriam-Webster says is based on 'green' plus brainwashing, in its meaning of 'persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship'; but I think is usefully aligned with whitewashing, in its literal meaning of 'a liquid coating to whiten a surface', and its figurative meaning which is 'to gloss over or cover us (such as vices or crimes)'. Greenwashing sure looks to me something like a crime.

Various resources explain how to detect greenwash (see the sources at the end). The practice involves misleading, overstating, omitting, baseless statements, self-generated seals or ticks, vague claims, meaningless technical jargon, gratuitous images of trees or dolphins, and using green packaging. Seeing through complexity of greenwash is challenging; it's intended to be so. (Image taken from this poster.)

At a fundamental level, though, greenwash is simple to understand. It's a lie.

The difference between what green consumers want and what greenwash provides is shown in this second Venn. Don't be put off by the amount of text, the details will be very familiar to most readers. (Click image for larger version.) You see these details every day on supermarket shelves, TV and social media, in the local community, and in many product disclosure statements.

Now, I don't have a green halo; I'm not about to judge your shopping trolley contents. Each of us have to work this out, and there are multiple factors that influence an individual's purchases; the higher cost of genuinely green products being key. But I furiously resent being deliberately misled, so the deluge of greenwashing makes me angry.

Lately I've been thinking, it's not enough to merely avoid faux-green products. It's against Australian law to mislead consumers. These false and misleading claims should be challenged.

But, did you know there is no legal definition of green meaning environmentally friendly? In fact, the words green and environmental are both pretty vague. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) publication Green marketing and the Australian Consumer Law says it best:

‘Green’ This statement is very vague, and conveys little information to the consumer - other than the message that your product is in some way less damaging to the environment than others. This term invites consumers to give a wide range of meanings to the claim, which risks misleading them. ‘Environmentally friendly’ or ‘environmentally safe’ These claims are also vague and could potentially mislead consumers into thinking that the product causes no harm to the environment in its production, usage and disposal. Few, if any, products could make this claim. Almost all products have some adverse impact on the environment in their manufacture, packaging, use or disposal.

  

ACCC continues that producers, suppliers and advertisers need to explain how their products or services are green. Their 2011 publication is for producers and advertisers and is also a handy reference for consumers. It defines key words used in 'green claims' and it explains the various efficiency and other 'green' rating systems. It's worth a read.

The other role of the ACCC is to investigate green advertising claims that consumers report as false or misleading. I'm glad they have this role, but I think the flood of greenwash in advertising is beyond the scope of any agency to investigate and prosecute each individual instance. Interestingly, some industries have realised greenwash will eventually splash back all over the producers and have started voluntary oversight schemes (See Two Sides as an example.)

When despair overcomes my green anger, I start to wonder if we are allowing ourselves to be misled to avoid the hard work of being a genuinely green consumer. Are we swallowing the greenwash so we can feel better about environmental degradation? A sort of consumer mouthwash. But then, how hard should it be to be able to buy genuinely green products? Do I have the energy and resources to challenge advertisers 'green' claims through a legal process? Why the hell should I have to?

Making green consumer choices is almost impossible when we are drowning in greenwash. Cynical manipulation of consumers' personal vulnerabilities and best intentions has long been a feature of marketing - to deliberately undermine markets as Noam Chomsky's extensive work makes clear. The least we can do is arm ourselves with a similar level of cynicism about the 'green' claims.

Greenwash represents a deliberate misleading of consumers, who don't get what they are paying for. Much worse, though, greenwashing props up the production and consumption practices that are decimating the ecology of our home planet. Faux green marketing is perpetuating the destruction that many of us want to see stop.

At heart, green consuming involves buying less. At its heart, greenwash is about increasing consumption and profit is increased.

Fundamentally, it remains up to us to ensure we are buying only what we need and what products claim to be. Otherwise, don't buy it. If you can, set up coordinated boycotts, complain to the large mainstream chains, threaten to report if items continue to be stocked, and follow through with reports to the ACCC or a relevant industry body.

Be motivated by your green anger at being deliberately misled.

Artwork used under Creative Commons

• Green nine colours image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=935753 
• Green tick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Green_check.svg
• Green plants: https://www.dailyclipart.net/clipart/green-plants-clip-art/
• Green ribbon: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Green_ribbon.svg

Other artwork by author. 

Resources for information on detecting greenwash

• Green marketing guide by Choice, Australia https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/packaging-labelling-and-advertising/labelling/articles/green-claims-on-supermarket-labels
• Greenwash poster by US Contract Services Group, Inc. at https://283knn17wrdq3dg7tp1b92iy-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/greenwash-large.jpg
• Green marketing and the Australian Consumer Law by the ACCC https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Green%20marketing%20and%20the%20ACL.pdf