Avoid the temptation to green wash

March 10, 2008 – 3:11 pm

Wikipedia defines Green-wash as a term that is used to describe the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.  The term Green sheen has similarly been used to describe organisations which attempt to appear that they are adopting practices beneficial to the environment.

Making the right noises may give you short term benefits.  In the medium to long term such an approach may come back to haunt you!  People who have blagged there way through other issues normally come a cropper when competitors with a CV containing genuine evidence based actions enable customers to see through their claims.   Moving to a genuinely positive attitude towards improving the sustainability of your business means you will have to confess a recent change of attitude, perhaps leaving you at a competitive disadvantage for a while, but getting you out of a vicious circle.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of environmental and ethical issues and research shows that they are fast becoming one of the top purchasing decision makers.  In construction we often feel removed from ‘consumers’ but in practice the people we deal with are all consumers.  Public sector procurement increasingly gives the end user a voice and vote in procurement processes and decisions.

A study called “The Six Sins of Greenwashing” (Terrachoice) identified the six sins of greenwashing as:

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off  - e.g. we segregate all our waste on site (but don’t know how much we generate / are not going to tell you we generate more than ever)
2. Sin of No Proof - e.g. we are carbon neutral (in terms of our head office activities only)
3. Sin of Vagueness - e.g. we recycle 90% of our waste (that’s what our waste management company tells us they do with what we throw in the skips, we haven’t checked)
4. Sin of Irrelevance - e.g. all our sites adopt strict waste management plans (the one’s we are legally obliged to adopt along with everyone else)
5. Sin of Fibbing - e.g. certified ISO 14001 compliant (our holding company actually, not our business unit)
6. Sin of Lesser of Two Evils - e.g. we use environmentally friendly insecticides and herbicides (indiscriminately slashing the bio-diversity of the site, but with no toxic consequences)

The moral of the story - do it right, but if your approach is not genuinely ethical don’t spend marketing fortunes setting yourself up for a damaged reputation.   To test your existing approach for signs of green wash, the linked Defra Guidance applied to your marketing and interview teams is a good start.