Greenwashing
Beware oil and car companies who spend millions on publicity to "pump up their green image".
“Greenwashing” is the deceptive advertising aimed at misleading the public into thinking a company’s products or policies are environmentally friendly. The term was first used in 1986, when Jay Westervel coined it in an essay about the hotel industry’s practice of encouraging guests to reuse their towels to save water. Westervel believed the true motivation was increased profit (less labor and water costs), since the hotels didn’t bother to even recycle ( a practice that offered no cost cutting benefits).1
The oil industry is notorious for trying to put a green sheen on their practices through public relations and marketing. In 2000, British Petroleum spent $200 million to rebrand itself into an earth friendly company by shortening its name to BP, using the slogan ''Beyond Petroleum'' and redesigning its corporate insignia to a green and yellow sun. Commercials and billboards linked it to solar and wind power, even though the bulk of its profits still came from oil and it supports drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR), an ecologically unique and very sensitive area.2
British Petroleum spent $45 million to buy the Solarex solar energy corporation, but that's a tiny fraction of the $26.5 billion it spent to buy ARCO to increase BP's oil production. BP spent $5 billion over five years for oil exploration in Alaska alone.3
In 2008, the Advertising Standards Authority rebuked the energy conglomerate Shell for marketing their tar sands oil extraction in Alberta Canada as “sustainable”. Getting oil from tar sands emits 2x-5x more greenhouse gases than conventional extraction. It also poisons and depletes the water table, and destroys the vital forest under which the tar sands lie.4
Car companies are not much better. GM produced commercials with its gas guzzling SUVs driving through bucolic meadows as if they belonged in nature. Toyota was fighting California’s clean air standards at the same time it touted itself as a green company for its hybrid Toyota Prius.
Plug in cars are by no means environmentally benign: each vehicle needs metal for its body, plastics for its interior, rubber for its tires and a fuel source for its batteries. It is important that we all remain vigilant that auto companies do not greenwash their electric vehicles like many have done with some of their hybrids, when an electric motor simply added power, not efficiency, to larger cars. Cars made from recycled materials and efficient battery recycling programs are vital so plug in vehicles tread ever more lightly on the planet. Any automobile manufacturer making electric cars but fighting clean air rules needs to be brought to task by us consumers.
Unless we have solar panels on our roofs, grid electricity also needs to get cleaner. Even when powered by the United States grid mix (which contains 51% coal), plug in cars average 45% fewer CO2 emissions than gasoline cars5, but this doesn’t mean we can let utilities rest on their green laurels! Call your local utility to find out from where its power comes – what percentage is coal, hydroelectric, geothermal, natural gas, solar and wind. Ask if you can buy “green power”, which, although a bit more expensive, buys the solar, geothermal and wind power the utility generates.
Having a skeptical eye to all advertising is crucial to being an informed consumer. Don’t get sucked in by greenwashing – do your homework before making a purchase and make sure that the company you are supporting truly walks its talk when it comes to the environment.
For more information on greenwashing, visit:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=242
http://www.greenwashing.net/
