Even Sustainability-Focused Companies Encounter Greenwashing. Here’s Why.

Last April, lying in bed and indulging in my post-COVID-self-soothing-social-media-wake-up ritual, I opened Instagram and scrolled to my company’s latest post. A gorgeous product shot was captioned with a claim that one of our newest products was 100% recyclable. I was instantly in panic mode. A few expletives came to mind and my stomach tightened. I jumped up to get in touch with our social media manager, who readily confirmed that this claim (one the manufacturer submitted and someone on our team unknowingly copied and pasted in) was also listed in the product’s description on our website. And while the product is actually recyclable, there aren’t any facilities that actually recycle it. I recognized immediately: a product of ours had been unwittingly greenwashed.

In essence, greenwashing is a common principle of brands or companies spending more money and effort on making themselves appear “green” and earth-conscious than what they put into ensuring genuine sustainability in their practices and products. It’s all about the surface appeal and not about what’s really being done to make a positive environmental impact, and it’s a concept that evolved sometime long before I was was aware of the problem and sometime between the ’50s and ’90s, so it’s nothing new — it’s just more and more critical we recognize it.

The phenomenon of greenwashing has, unfortunately, grown so ubiquitous that consumers can sometimes have a hard time even spotting what is or isn’t greenwashing. And many companies are great at cloaking real greenwashing behind layers of seemingly sustainable buzzwords or practices. But just think about the example I just gave. Would you recognize “100% recyclable” as greenwashing? Probably not. This is because marketers are trying harder than ever to respond to the growing consumer demand for environmentally sustainable products, and companies are attempting in mostly short-sighted, incomplete ways to meet these demands. The result is that consumers are bombarded by products claiming a multitude of “sustainable” qualities, and it’s hard to tell what’s real. Whether the practice is intentionally deceptive or simply naive depends entirely on the company making the claims.

But we often hear about greenwashing from the perspective of the consumer. For those who are business owners, the situation is reversed. If you’ve been accused of greenwashing, noticed greenwashing happening in your company, or want to see if it might be present, where do you start?

Taking Responsibility and Action

In the case of my incidental greenwashing, my immediate reaction was to have the post taken down, along with the spurious claim on the product’s page. I then resolved to be more vigilant through additional employee training and clarification on the topic. At this point I recognize that it’s not just my reputation or my company’s that’s at stake, but the health of our planet that really needs to be at the forefront of these conversations and actions.

So the temptation may be there to make that quick social media post for your business, promoting “eco-friendly” materials or business practices. But that’s a very quick way to be called out or suspected of greenwashing, unless you’re doing the hard work to back up those statements and prove to your customers or clients that they can trust you. If someone asks tough questions about your sustainability efforts, will you be able to answer them directly and authentically? If they call you out will you be able to admit which of your practices could be better and which are truly sustainable? Lying or dodging questions from customers are telltale signs of online greenwashing.

And above all, if you want to avoid these accusations, start from the real beginning: do the work to be sustainable. Then your claims will be backed by truth and you’ll be making positive environmental steps.

The Role of Businesses

When I started Coolperx, I didn’t realize that we’d become the face of sustainability within our industry. Promotional products, also known as “SWAG,” are mostly cheap, poorly made, and environmentally toxic, and my company is focused on helping other corporations realize the harmful effects of products like these and opt for genuinely sustainable options. But this is a perfect example of a greenwashing liability for business owners.

Promotional products are a $30 billion a year industry, with an estimated $24 billion worth of products dropped into landfills almost immediately, according to the Advertising Specialty Institute’s 2020 Global Ad Impressions Study. Despite this fact, the industry continues to grow. The shocking amount of junk purchased by companies looking to better engage with their customers or their employees is shocking. Not only does this stuff fail to build any sense of loyalty or morale, but it’s clear how little thought is ever given to the environmental effects of so much wasteful product.

Even major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Delta, all with huge public-facing claims of new standards for sustainable business practices, are still purchasing some of the most carbon-heavy promotional products, which lack any sustainable means of disposal. And there’s the greenwashing issue: plenty of great-sounding sustainability claims on the surface, but a lack of real action on the small but important things going on below.

Imagine a busy administrative assistant looking for sustainable onboarding gifts that clearly convey to a new hire that the company values environmental sustainability…only to buy a “reusable” tote bag and fill it with branded headphones, a company t-shirt, and a water bottle. Upon receiving the bag, the new hire has no use for the bag because it’s still too risky to use as a grocery bag (cross-contamination and all) and the shoulder straps are too uncomfortable to use it to carry heavy items. The new hire sends it to Goodwill, along with half of the other products given to them on their first day, which aren’t covetable or useful, where they end up in a landfill. Not only was this bag, inexpensive as it was, a waste of money for the company, but the bag itself has one of the highest carbon footprints of any product I’ve come across, over four times that of our most commonly sold sustainable promotional product options. This technically-reusable product is incredibly damaging to the environment, more so than a disposable paper bag by nearly 1700%.

It’s the responsibility of business owners to recognize weak spots like this in their business models, where massively un-sustainable choices are being made, and then make the responsible changes before unwittingly — or intentionally — making false claims and being the next company hit by greenwashing complaints.