Environment: Reverse shopping and Greenwashing exercises

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties 27’s (CoP 27) Egyptian presidency named Coca-Cola Company — one of the world’s largest plastic polluters — as the official sponsor and supporter of the year’s biggest climate change conference.

Commentators and activists have called Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the world’s biggest climate summit a “greenwashing exercise.”

Greenwashing is defined as making an unsubstantiated claim in order to mislead customers into believing that a company’s products are environmentally friendly. It is the process of creating a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company’s products are better for the environment.

Examples of greenwashing

Reverse Shopping – Decathlon has decided to reverse its name for a month in order to promote reverse shopping. Three cities in Belgium will now have stores with the sign “NOLHTACED”!

Reverse shopping basically means that customers can resell old or unused sporting goods back to the store, and the company will then repair the item and resell it in some form under warranty. The goal is to reuse as much equipment as possible in order to reduce the impact on our environment and avoid waste. The move is to promote general awareness of environment-friendly practices.