It's complicated: the risks of binary greenwashing in an enlightened world

The world seems to be embracing binary thinking at a frightening pace.

(As pointed out in Isabelle Bale's fantastic article.) But corporate sustainability seems to be the one place where binary statements are no longer being tolerated by customers.

"Don't worry, we're pret-ty green" isn't a good enough answer anymore. It's akin to ‘not far now’ when you’re gridlocked on the M6 and the children in the backseats are asking ‘Are we there yet?’

Surely, we don't need to be climate scientists to know the answer is more complicated than that. (So complicated that the ASA is about to ban the word ‘sustainability’ unless a product can deliver against specific expectations.) 01, 02. Greenwashing is corporate cloak-wearing. Here are some of the ways it hides:

Hiding in ambiguity and the mislead:?

Generic terms such as 'green' or 'eco-friendly' are common, often without substantial environmental benefit or backing, while ambiguous statements like ‘natural' offer themselves as a get out of jail free card, lacking precise definitions and often evading regulatory standards.

Hiding in irrelevant features and accreditations:?

This is the touting of environmentally friendly but irrelevant aspects of a product. (The uglier sister of this being doing so with aspects that are, in reality, mandated by law, and offer no additional environmental benefit.)

Hiding in the lesser of two evils:?

Emphasising a marginally greener aspect of a product that is otherwise environmentally detrimental.

Hiding in double Speak:

An example here is Sheba's 'Hope Reef’. It saw many creative accolades rain down upon it in 2022. I can't say I'm not creatively jealous of it. It no doubt deserves recognition, and let's face it, restoring coral reef is better than not restoring coral reef.?

But I struggle a little with the last line in the case study:?

"MORE CORAL TODAY. MORE FISH TOMORROW."?

Sheba tells me on its website it's 'committed to 100% sustainably sourced fish'. But if you've watched Seaspiracy, you know this is a somewhat weightless term.

Then there's the elephant-sized tuna in the room - Sheba makes cat food from fish. Suggesting, perhaps, that a more accurate end line might be:

"MORE CORAL TODAY. MORE FISH TOMORROW (THAT WE CAN MINCE INTO CAT FOOD.)”

Sheba was no. 8 in pet food in 2023, with volumes approaching ￡100m. (Source: The Grocer.) While Sheba doesn't only sell fish-based cat food, at ￡0.33> a tin, that’s still a lot of fish.

The Green Claims Code from the Competition and Markets Authority tells us that claims around sustainability should:

-Be truthful and accurate

-Be clear and unambiguous

-Not omit or hide important information

-Only make fair and meaningful comparisons

-Be substantiated with robust and credible evidence

-Consider the full life cycle of a product

Is it just me, or is this not currently reflected in UK advertising and marketing?

Greenwashing is rife. But it’s naive of brands to think customers are drinking the cool aid, too. Consumer access to truth is seriously outpacing this corporate cloak-and-daggery. Customers are learning what real sustainability means, and faster than unwilling brands can attempt to obscure the truth.?

Streaming platforms are beaming documentary exposés into our homes on the daily, while ‘new news’ start-ups on social media are offering us a tint-free look behind the business curtain. The result? We consumers are getting smarter. We're demanding transparency because we want to, where we can, and where we can afford to, use our purchase power to try and buy a better planet. (And, to steal a phrase from marketing professor Scott Galloway, we’re now armed with greater ‘weapons of diligence’ with which to do it.)

There's nowhere to hide anymore.

Whatever a brand claims, people can investigate it, and when they do, said claim meets the cold winds of reality, and fast. The modern customer can slice through sustainability fiction easier than Beatrix's Hattori Hanzo slices through endless suited heavies, and this is more true of Gen Z than any generation that precedes them.

‘Gen Z is growing up in an age of unlimited access to self-service information. They are savvy, ultra-educated consumers taking it upon themselves to do the due diligence on truth and facts. Gen Z dig beyond surface-level facts and labels to better evaluate the products and companies they buy from… Trust among Gen Z is at an all-time low across the board. [Down 7% for brands, 7% for media, and 5% for government.] They?ve realized that what corporations, media and brands often have in common is that they?re working for better futures…? designed for themselves.’

(Source: Vice Guide to Culture - 2023).

The risks for brands of blagging it are very real. First, there's reputational damage. Then, there's a loss of customer trust (and by default, customers themselves). There's also legal liability, and most painful, missed opportunities for real sustainability.

Greenwashing is of course, deceptive in nature, and is soon, in and of itself, going to be prosecutable by law.?

(The European Parliament has recently passed the EU Directive to ban businesses from making misleading or hard-to-understand green claims. It means businesses selling in the EU will no longer be able to make vague claims such as:

-Eco friendly

-Environmentally friendly

-Natural

-Biodegradable

-Recycled

...If they cannot back them up with concrete evidence and third-party verification. The directive awaits further steps to become law, but the wheels certainly seem to be in motion.?

A negative that may emerge from this is that large brands are more likely to have the resources to verify their claims, and gradually write off the cost of jumping through these hoops. But at least they're now going to have some hoops to jump through.)

But yet, we find ourselves in a tricky situation.

Because there is also a concern about green hushing. But green hushing, I truly believe, is more often the product of corporate laziness, fear, and heads buried in sand, than malice.

Doing little, and saying nothing is easy and safe. Doing something, and saying something, with the risk of getting it wrong by not doing enough, or focusing on the wrong things, is hard, and unsafe. ‘But-what-are-you-doing-about-INSERT-HERE?’ is an almost guaranteed response to any promotion of sustainability efforts from a brand.

So, what are we to do? Especially when greenwashing is not just about actively lying, it's also when a business talks about the truth of a product that is part of a non-sustainable portfolio. And lest we forget, the sustainability challenge isn’t only limited to physical products, either. There’s a growing recognition of the environmental impact of digital and SAAS businesses, too. An easy example of this is the herculean amount of energy spent keeping seas of servers cool for companies like Amazon.

Consumer interest in sustainability is always the victim of the economic climate, and 2023 was a tough ole’ financial year for many. But whilst harsh economic times always see a return to functional, prince-sensitive spending, beneath this, there does seem to live on an undeniable undercurrent. One of 'not wanting to smash the planet any more than we've already smashed it’.?

Consumer spending is changing.

The ‘image’ of a product, and a brand, has leapt onto a new, much bigger canvas.

-supply chain, labour chain, and raw materials

-design and manufacturing process

-circularity (or lack thereof)

-packaging and distribution network

-second-life or recycling potential

These are no longer superfluous details of a product, they are the product. The modern customer will find out about them. What’s more, they will attach the information they find to their perceptions of the brand.

(And of course, as already noted, this now no longer just about the customer’s desires, it will soon be a legal responsibility to get ahead and stay ahead of this.)

My reaching for my wallet is no longer only about the product you put in front of me, and the brand codes you’ve wrapped it in. It’s about how it was born and raised. It’s about how it will die, how soon it will die, and if and how it can be born again.

This is even affecting the luxury sector. Here, customers are now prizing qualities like sustainability, innovation, and purpose over qualities like exclusivity, prestige, and extravagance.?

(Source - Vice Guide to Culture, 2023.)

This is in a sector where the narrative is about paying more for something in order that fewer other people have it. Not necessarily because that price has a strong correlation with the product's quality or worth.?

All things considered, that is a tectonic shift.?

For pretty much the entirety of the 20th century, the name of the game was time and cost-effectiveness. The majority of businesses optimised the majority of decisions around these factors. Sustainability wasn’t on most people's radar. Besides, a lot of today's sustainable technologies like Pi?atex, Mylo, or Grounded, didn't exist then.

Optimising for speed and economy alone, once, or twice, can only do so much harm. But during the last century, this approach has wrapped its tentacles around our entire economy. It's the reason a product costs ￡20, not ￡30. It's the reason you can order the product and have it tomorrow, not in three days. But it's also the reason the product's planetary footprint is so much bigger than it could be.?

What’s the result of the compounding of this approach? Thousands of stitches have sewn it to the fabric of modern life. We can't simply unpick those stitches, because they've formed scar tissue - this is the way we expect the world to work now.

Now we’ve experienced 1-hour delivery, 1-week delivery is like going back to the stone age. Now another human being will bring a Fanta Fruit Twist to our doorstep if we tap our phone screen a few times, the Fanta Fruit Twist we have to walk 50m to the corner shop for might still taste twice as good for us having invested the effort, but we just won’t bother.

We can’t just 'undo'.

We can’t just turn around and try to walk out of the forest the same way we walked in. We have to find a new way out.

The suggestions linked below are just a starting point from a definite non-expert (me), and there are no doubt multitudes more if you engage the right people. But this is a march we desperately need to make.?

Because whilst becoming as sustainable as you can is certainly a lot more painful than trudging along, being the business you’ve always been, while pointing at your competitors and saying “Well, they aren’t doing it, either”, it’s also painfully necessary.

Whether you do it in the name of the planet, in the name of leaving it in a better state for future generations, or because in the long run, the value risk of not doing it will be too great, ultimately, doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you start doing it.

So, lead by example, and learn how to be better.