All Green Marketing is Greenwashing
Early this month, the dictionary made an environmentally friendly additional. After being used by environmentalist since 1986, Merriam-Webster added “greenwashing” to its list of well over 470,000 words. While this marks an achievement for activists, throwing extra energy behind their economic criticisms, it should concern anyone who runs a “green business.”
Merriam-Webster’s definition may not be legally binding, but it nonetheless implicates the entire ecosystem of so-called sustainable enterprises. After all, the dictionary now defines greenwashing as any action that makes something “appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is.”
Given we exist within an economy governed by imperatives for growth, extraction, and consumption, there is scarce a business that could escape this sweeping categorization when trying to seem green. To put it bluntly, if a profit motive governs a green business, even the best intentions won’t save them from greenwashing.
Take The Better Packaging Company for example. Better Packaging made history by becoming the first company to use 100% post-consumer, ocean-bound plastic to create recycled plastic packaging for businesses that produce, sell, and distribute consumer goods. Even more to their credit, women in previously colonized countries throughout South-East Asia collect the plastic that is then recycled, and Better Packaging compensates these women for their contributions. As a result, Better Packaging creates a pathway out of poverty for women clean up their communities and our collective ocean. All told, the New Zealand-based business is much greener and more equitable than any other plastic producer in the world.
It must be impossible for them to contribute to greenwashing. Right?
Unfortunately, not quite.
Yes, they are by far one of the most sustainable businesses around. Yes, they help to establish a circular economy for plastic. Yes, there’s hardly anything in their messaging that could be construed as greenwash except their claims of being “climate positive” based on their purchases of carbon offsets. While that is certainly commendable, an article co-signed by 41 scientists states explicitly that such statements are at best misleading because of the varying timescales of the carbon cycle.
More to the point, their business model relies on global consumption patterns that are inherently damaging. Their business depends upon other companies producing and shipping goods around the world, a process with well-documented negative impacts to the environment. Of course, while shipping and consumption are themselves problematic, the onus for such a system cannot by placed solely on Better Packaging. However, by partnering with producers who manufacture goods that require the extraction of raw materials, Better Packaging helps companies with an adverse environmental impact to green their image by doing nothing more than switching their plastic provider.
It may seem nitpicky to target a company improving one of the world’s most polluting industries and implicate them in the damage done by globalized commerce, but that’s the point. Truly green businesses and global capitalism cannot coexist. Simply by operating within this system, without challenging its inherent dynamics, a business becomes complicit in the degradation of the environment associated with the system that necessitates growth, extraction, and consumption.
Naomi Klein makes it clear in This Changes Everything: Our economy is at war with the environment. Our current economy understands the natural world only in terms of “natural resources” and “ecosystem services.” As long as that remains the case, sustainability remains a fairy tale. To make ecological living real, we’ll need to establish a new economy capable of stewarding ecosystems with reciprocal, regenerative relationships. Until then, there will never be a truly “green” business. And all green marketing will be greenwashing.
This is a hard reality that marketers and leaders on the sustainability side of the economy try to avoid. To help ignore harsh truths, they present ways to steer clear of greenwashing. I even did the same during my brief stint as a sustainability copywriter. But the truth is simple. It’s all greenwash. This is evident when you take a critical eye to the workarounds marketers present.
One common suggestion is to pursue a certification to prove that the business sources materials responsibly. My question is this: how can any sourcing be responsible and sustainable if it still necessitates extraction? Yes, it’s all well and good to avoid mining in protected areas with a well-compensated workforce. But if you still need to dig into the Earth or pull up plants for “renewable materials” – a process which is not as sustainable as it seems – then you’re still going damage. Albeit a little less.
After all, if a mining effort preserves a protected area but then exploits nearby ecosystem, the preserve may still experience collateral damage. It’s been observed on numerous occasions that mining waste leaks into and pollutes the surrounding areas. Moreover, from the perspective of biodiversity, the fragmentation of ecosystems puts serious stress on numerous species. By restricting their natural range, even if they retain a protected preserve, most populations are guaranteed to decline. This has been demonstrated through intentional experimentation in the Amazon and by monitoring the impacts of farms, cattle ranches, and mines opening up in otherwise pristine environments. The only truly responsible way to source materials is through a circular process that reuses and repurposes previous products that would otherwise end up as landfill waste. Hence the recent emergence of landfill mining.
That being said, if a producer creates a cheap product that they expect only to be used for weeks to months before being disposed of, and the producer doesn’t have a strategy for reclaiming and recycling it at the end of its life, then their product still contributes to waste. It isn’t part of a circular economy. It doesn’t truly contribute to a green economy, and it could conceivably be accused of greenwashing, nonetheless.
Another common solution is to make clear, science-based, data-backed statements about the origins and impacts of a product. This means that from a Federal Trade Commission standpoint, the company couldn’t be accused of false advertising. But does it mean it’s free from greenwashing? Probably not. This is because of one simple fact: the claims are still there to make the product appeal to environmentally minded consumers. But, unless the product is an absolute necessity, the greenest option is not to purchase anything. Or, moreover, it might still have a negative impact ignored by the marketing.
What I wish to convey here is that effectively every business that calls itself sustainable while operating inside of a capitalist system is guilty of greenwash in one way or another. Even the greenest businesses of them all. The only way to do green marketing inside of capitalism is to greenwash. There is no alternative under capitalism. The only way to achieve a “green economy” is to pursue a just transition to a mutualistic, community-controlled, democratically planned, decentralized economy.
Some call this eco-socialism. Others, intercommunalism. And still more simply term it the “new economy.” The name is irrelevant. As long as it doesn’t scare people away from the empowering, liberatory, regenerative nature of an alternative economy, you can call it whatever you want.
No matter its name, we need an economy that can rein in runaway growth, contract our extractive impact, expand our regenerative footprint, and improve the average quality of life for everyone by providing people with more meaningful work, deeper community connections, and true control over their destinies. It’s time to accept that we exist within an indecent, exploitative, anti-environment economy. The only way to “green” it is to strip it down and build something new from the parts.
