I hate reading blogs or websites that provide categories that contain no information.  So here is a little post on the Mea Culpa category.

I hate it when newspapers, TV and radio news programs and just about every other news source makes a mistake and doesn’t make a correction easy to find (if they make a correction at all).  These mistakes can have huge impacts.  I decided to add this category when I accused someone of crying wolf about greenwash.  I figured that if I was going to make accussations that I better be willing and able to retract those accussations in an obvious way.  So I want to make sure that Greenwash makes it easy for you to find corrections to my mistakes.  That is what the Mea Culpa category is all about. 

Hopefully there won’t be too many posts here.  I am human though, so if you do find mistakes, let me know.

Taking Back Austin seems to see green washing in every action that the City of Austin is taking.  While it is always a good idea to double check the “good ideas” that our government offers us, I encourage people to be careful of overusing the term greenwash.  The source of TBA’s ire is Austin’s plans to implement single stream recycling (recycling seems like a good idea right?).  The problem for TBA is that Austin doesn’t have a single stream recycling plant, yet, and the recyclables need to be transported a distance of about 80 miles to San Antonio by truck.

There are all sorts of problems with TBA’s post, but the big one is the lack of rigor in analyzing the issues s/he is railing against.

I think TBA gives us a good example of how not to expose green washing. In fact, I think that s/he gives us a great example of diminishing the power of the term.  Remember that school yard retort — that’s my name don’t wear it out.  Well, inappropriately labeling something can wear out its value.  We are seeing that in the use of the words green, earth friendly, environmentally friendly, eco, etc.  That is why there is growing attention to the term greenwash.  Let’s not over use the term and make it as meaningless as organic or natural.

Oh yeah, TBA does provide an interesting example of using the term greenwash in as an anti-government regulation attack.  Kind of interesting.

Greenwashing is the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy.

Greenwashing - SourceWatch.

This is a broad brush definition.  What just what is unjustified?  That is going to be in the eye of the beholder, so I think it is important that we train the beholder to ask the right questions.

Let’s look at the label as I discussed in two recent posts — Starbucks and Clorox (Brita water filters).  In the case of Starbucks the company was accused of greenwashing because it used and wasted a lot of water in cleaning its utensils.  Is this greenwash?  What are the water specific claims that Starbucks is making that this contradicts?  Can a whole company’s efforts be condemed because they are not doing everything all at once?

Now look at the case of Clorox and their campaign to encourage people to not buy bottle water because of the waste associated with plastic water bottles.  In this case Clorox is asking people to use its products instead of competitors (filtered water is definitely a competitor of bottled water) because the competetiors’ products are wasteful.  However, Clorox itself is not recycling a product that is recyclable, and that is recycled in Europe.  That is greenwash — Clorox is using one environmental claim to sell its products while at the same time not living up to the actual promise of its own products and capabilities.

Green Talk thinks Clorox ’s role in trying to reduce water bottle usage is an oxymoron. I think it is green wash.

I meant to write about this a couple of weeks ago, but new (good) habits are hard to start, which is why I am willing to cut some companies some slack. But Clorox is not one of those companies in this case.

Here is the deal as I understand it. Clorox, along with Nalgene, is sponsoring Filter for Good the purpose of which is to get people to, you guessed it, use filtered water instead of bottled water. Clorox is the North America parent of Brita. So far so good. Americans have an unhealthy love affair with bottled water, much of which is just plain old municipal water in a wasteful package. So what is wrong with this picture?

It seems that in Europe Brita filters are recycled, but they aren’t here in the United States! That to me is greenwash. If the same product is recyclalbe and already is recycled in another country the company should be working at top speed to get it recycled in every other. Green Talk has a link to a video and lots more information on what you can do to convince Clorox to start recycling Brita water filters here in the United States.

This recycling conundrum points up a problem that we in the US face. In Europe there seems to be a better system for retailers to get products back to the manufacturer. If we really want to close the loop on products we need to improve the system for getting products back to their point of origin. But until there is an easy way for retailers to reverse the supply chain (storage of the return for recycling product is the big problem) it is going to be an up hill battle. Hmmm, maybe there is a business opportunity there — a store in every major mall that accepts recyclables.

BusinessGreen reports on an article in The Sun about Starbucks’ use of water in it stores.

Starbucks has been accused of greenwashing today after it was claimed that the company wastes 23.4 million litres of water – enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool every 83 minutes – by leaving taps on in its branches all day.

Pun intended, but using that much water is not washing in a green manner.  I also don’t think that it is green washing.  Green washing to me is when a company makes a green claim about its products or services that is less than accurate either factually or morally.  No where in the article does it say that Starbucks is claiming that it uses less water than its competitors or that it is a water efficient company.

By all means Starbucks should be taken to task for not being more efficient in its use of water.  They should also be ashamed of their response to the accusations.

A representative for Starbucks said: “Dipper wells use a stream of continuous cold fresh-running water to rinse away food residue, help keep utensils clean and prevent bacterial growth. This technique is common and well-accepted in the industry.”

They added that the company’s policies were in line with World Health Organisation (WHO), United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Union (EU) directives for in-store water supply standards, but conceded, that ” the opportunity exists to reduce our total water usage”.

The proper response to something like this is “Thank you for pointing out an opportunity to improve. We will certainly look into it.  This may require be a longer term solution as we have to follow local health codes.” 

A company can’t change everything over night, but by this time next year Starbucks should certianly be able to point to dramatic changes.  I hope The Sun follows up on this topic.

Saab Plants Trees To Placate Australian Ad Board.

A year after Saab was accused of Greenwashing, Saab Australia’s parent company, GM Holden, has been successfully sued by Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for misleading buyers into believing their vehicles would be carbon-neutral during thier lifetimes, Autoblog reports.

The result of the suit, GM Holden (Saab Austrailia’s parent company)is planting 12,500 trees and retraining its staff in relation to making green claims.

Wonder if the training will be how to more effectively greenwash or about how to create meaningful initiatives?

When will we see the first big greenwashing suits here in the United States?

As I have been contemplating this blog I have wondered how to evaluate environmental claims. Terrachoice, which claims to be North Anerica’s premiere environmental marketing agency, offers an interesting framework for evaluating environmental claims – The Six Sins of Greenwashing.  They seem to have derived these “sins” from research at big box retailers and the environmental claims they saw on products there. 

The Six Sins are:

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off
2. Sin of No Proof
3. Sin of Vagueness
4. Sin of Irrelevance
5. Sin of Fibbing
6. Sin of Lesser of Two Evils

For more details on the Six Sins Terrachoice offers a “green paper” on their study.

I will add these sins as tags for future use.  It will be interesting to see how competing systems or frameworks treat the same products and companies.

It seems that a lot of the information I am seeing on greenwash originates in Europe.  Do you think that the Europeans are ahead of us in experiencing greenwashing?

Welcome.  You can read a little more about me and the origins ofthis blog on the About page.  But since you are here, I will expand a little on my views on the Greening of Business. 

Eight years ago, 1999, my business school was trying to carve out an identity for itself.  The then Dean had the brilliant idea that we should become a leading E-business school.  I argued forcefully with him that it would be a short sighted decision.  My reasoning was that ecommerce and other internet related activities would soon become standard business practices.  Basing a long term strategy on a passing fad seemed like a bad idea.  Thankfully that Dean left and the school didn’t end up following the E-Business strategy.

You are probably asking what this has to do with green business.  Good question.  And the answer is everything.

Nine years from now green and sustainable business practices will be commonplace.  Sure, we won’t be living a completely carbon-neutral, ecologically sustainable lifestyle.  Businesses, however, will have internalized the marketplaces demand that they need to be good (or at least better) stewards of our planet.  And some of these companies will truly believe it and live it.  Others will be laggards and only greenwash their products and companies.

This revolution will not happen as easily as the Internet Revolution.  But it will happen.  And it will happen faster if there is an active debate on what it really means to be green and sustainable.  That means the need to call BS when we see greenwashing but also understanding where companies really are trying, supporting them in their baby steps while never letting them forget we expect them to run in the near future.

Enjoy the debate.