What is greenwashing? "Greenwashing" is a claim made in order to mislead customers into believing that a company’s products are environmentally friendly.
e.g. In 2022, the United Nations announced that Coca Cola was sponsoring its COP27 climate talks.
People were saying that Coca-Cola, the world's largest plastic polluter, was spending money greenwashing their brand to
create a false impression.
Other examples of greenwashing are:
Efficient light bulbs made in a factory that pollutes rivers.
Using fluff language with no clear meaning, e.g., ‘eco-friendly'
Using green images that indicate an (injustified) green impact, e.g., flowers blooming from an exhaust pipe
Irrelevant claims like emphasising one tiny green attribute when everything else is un-green
Using a ‘label’ that looks like a third-party endorsement, except it's made up
Using difficult words like jargon and information that only a scientist could check and understand
Declaring you are slightly greener than the rest, even if the rest are pretty terrible
“Eco-friendly cigarettes, anyone?” ‘Greening' a dangerous product does not make it safe.
When there is no proof, it could be right, but where is the evidence?
Outright lying: totally fabricated claims and data, and so on and so forth