Talk the talk
* Green up your mission statement
* Encourage green scepticism
* Wise up to jargon
* Make unfettered money
BAE Systems, one of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers, had an image problem. Their bullets had maimed children and killed untold innocents. The company executives convened to come up with a somewhat softer image. The answer, they agreed, was simple. They began developing green bullets. Not bullets in shades of jade, lime and turquoise – no, environmentally friendly bullets. Their new range of lethal projectiles offered clear advantages over the ghastly traditional type, which, BAE revealed, could ‘harm the environment and pose a risk to people’.
Business, BAE bosses believed, would boom. More bullets would be sold. Environmentalists would rejoice as conflicts were settled with ecologically aware killing machines. BAE executives knew what they were doing when unveiling a bullet tipped with tungsten rather than lead. They were merely following one of the new tools of business. Throw in a ‘green’ here, an ‘eco’ there and, hey presto, your arms-manufacturing giant is a friend of the planet.
Words are powerful things. People guzzle gallons of cola, just because it’s ‘lite’. Treated sewage sludge is rebranded as ‘biosolids’ and suddenly the world is clamouring to spread it on their soil and crops. The beauty of greenwash is that the consumer justifies excessive spending with the belief that they are saving the planet. Hogwash. In actual fact, excessive consumption can only ever be a threat to the biosphere.
But encouraging people to overconsume is only part of the greenwash genius. Businesses who wouldn’t recognize corporate responsibility if it came up and booted them in the behind cleverly exploit environmental credentials as a trendy means to boost profits. Over time, consumers will become flannelled to distraction by an overkill of good intentions. Ultimately, the words ‘eco’, ‘sustainable’, and ‘corporate responsibility’ will come to mean nothing. Cynicism will mount. Even the truly environmentally friendly companies will be mistrusted, and everybody will go back to buying the usual old environmentally harmful crap.
In the golden age of ostentation and heady consumption, ‘greed was god’. Now, green is god. PR puffery, idle claims of eco-virtue, and fake promises are the modus operandi. Once, people feared that protecting the environment came at a cost to business. In actual fact, claims of environmental virtue are a boon to business. People will buy anything if they believe it is nice to flowers and dolphins. But of course it is easier and less expensive to change the way people think about reality than it is to change reality. All you need do is to say you are protecting the environment. No action is necessary. Greenwash is the new greenback. For now.
When BAE announced its green bullets, it was the final proof that greenwash had taken over the world. This shameless green behaviour had already been adopted by numerous other companies. Just hours before the 2007 United Nations conference on tackling climate change, oil conglomerate Shell found itself talking about how it was committed to a low carbon future. Five days later, tucked away in a press notice cunningly designed never to be, er, noticed was news that Singapore-based Environ Energy Global had bought Shell’s solar photovoltaic operations in India and Sri Lanka for an undisclosed sum. Solar energy no longer appeared central to Shell’s ‘low carbon future’. They were following the greenwash code to the letter – in fact, they were adding some of the letters and taking others away and, hey, almost rewriting the rules. The previous year, also buried away in an unheralded announcement, Shell had sold off its solar-module production business to a German firm. Greenwash doesn’t always have to be fancy words. Being economical with the truth is equally effective.
At the same time as Shell was banging on about low-carbon dreams, word was spreading about the ambitions of another oil bedfellow. BP had long been famous for its Beyond Petroleum campaign. Beyond Parody might have been a more apt title. The company was simultaneously gearing up to invest £1.5 billion in mining Canada’s tar sands for oil. They would be the world’s dirtiest oil mines. Campaigners describe the act as the ‘greatest environmental crime in history’.
There is much to learn from BP and Shell. Both are among the biggest producers of greenhouse gases in the world. Both claim to be ‘environmentally friendly’. Shell’s adverts for a greener future regularly pop up on TV, and inevitably they sometimes go too far. One advert in particular showed what can be done if you just have the balls to go for it. Against a soothing soundtrack and swirl of Technicolor petals, it revealed that the oil company uses its waste carbon dioxide to grow flowers. Technically true, but just 0.325 per cent is used for that purpose. Unfortunately, in this instance, the non-technical truth outed and the advert was promptly withdrawn.
To be a greenwash expert, a sophisticated balancing act is required to hide the truth without resorting to outright lies. For a reasonable £500 an hour, a host of PR companies will dream up ways to disguise the actualité. Advertising a green weekend break? Stick an energy-saving lightbulb in the all-night bar. Install a dimmer switch above the jacuzzi. One Devon hotel found that having ‘drought resistant hanging baskets’ was sufficient to label itself green. The world’s biggest diversified mining group, BHP Billiton, promised to ‘find lasting solutions consistent with our goal of zero harm’. Zero harm involved reducing accidents to its workers, not a pledge to stop scooping out the innards of the earth. But it sounded good. Here are six simple steps to follow if you want to abuse first the truth, then the planet.
1. Create a perfect environmental image. Park a gas-guzzling SUV beside a pristine stream. Sunlight glints off the polished twin exhausts. A doe-eyed deer nuzzles its bull bar. Click. Capture the image and place it in a glossy magazine read by people with too much money. They will associate gratifyingly wasteful 4x4s with the charms of Mother Earth.
2. Be selective with details. List charities your benevolent company has supported. Don’t be so vulgar, though, as to cite actual amounts. Philanthropists don’t feel the need to scream about their generosity and neither should you. Be sure to mention your donation to save the rare marshes in Mozambique. Omit to reveal that your company offered a one-off payment of £5.
3. Employ the distraction technique. Your firm makes bad stuff called acetic anhydride. Invest modestly in an organic farm and publicize accordingly. The environmental arm of the business is an ‘ardent supporter of local produce’. Just be careful not to mention, erm, acetic anhydride.
4. Choose your words carefully. Fresh. Clean. Eco. Friendly. Pure. Your company’s mission statement should include at least one of these choice words. Even better, modify your firm’s name. Grimshawl becomes Ecoshawl. PreTex becomes enviroTex. Be opaque with subsidiary companies. Pharmaceutical giant Procter & Gamble created a Future Friendly label. Shoppers had no idea P&G were behind it. What did it matter? It was a sublime use of vocabulary, meaning everything and nothing.
5. Stay calm. You are responsible for a rather generous spillage of acetic anhydride in a wildlife park and your questionable business practices are leaked to the media. Seize the initiative. Announce a list of voluntary schemes to clean up business practices in the future. ‘We are committed to best industry working practices and are currently working on a plan to reduce leakages.’ Make sure no timeframe is revealed.
6. Support human life rather than nature. Yes, you are killing the planet, but it is too expensive to avoid. Join forces with antislavery and human-rights groups. Sign up. ‘We are committed to ending the suffering of indigenous people the world over and have been actively campaigning for a fairer society.’ Whatever you do, don’t mention the environment. Ever.
With businesses country-wide employing these strategies, there are signs that the public is beginning to see through such laboured goodwill. In the final quarter of 2006, the Advertising Standards Authority investigated complaints concerning forty ‘green’ ads. Overnight, cynicism seemed to shoot through the roof. During the first half of 2007, the authority was asked to examine three hundred green ‘ads’. Even the government body, the Energy Saving Trust, has accused its paymasters of greenwash, in particular for making it difficult to understand how anyone can actually reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions. Surely that is the point? Make it sound like you are doing your bit, but in essence change nothing. Failing to grasp such an essential tenet of modern environmentalism explains why the Energy Saving Trust remains a marginal voice.
More than anyone, the trust needs to learn from one of Britain’s most successful businesses. Tesco learned from research carried out by its Sustainable Consumption Initiative that it would sound good to offer club-card points to those who declined to use wasteful plastic bags. Tesco then carried on producing three billion bags a year and rewarded those with lots of points with discount vouchers, thus encouraging even more consumerism. Think big. Remember the rules. At the very least, mislead your customers. You might even make some money on the way.
* Cynicism mounts among consumers and there is backlash against companies who promote their green credentials. Likely.
* Major oil companies announce series of campaigns including ‘save the albatross’ and ‘protect the greater-crested grebe’. Certain.
* Advertising Standards Authority records complaints against 2,000 green ads in first half of 2010. At least.
* Eco becomes the most popular prefix on the high street by 2012. Credible.
* Phrase ‘sustainable development’ is banned by government after poll shows only one in 300 can define it correctly. Unlikely.
Likelihood of greenwash triggering backlash against environmentally friendly companies: 91%