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.

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.

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.