By Patti Wood
Greenwashing is the practice of disseminating disinformation by an industry or organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image. Distorting or hiding facts is also part of this now ubiquitous undertaking by some of the biggest polluters on the planet, but it can also be seen in your own neighborhood, if you are looking. It’s a favorite activity of PR firms, ad agencies, politicians, and businesses that sit around conference tables and brainstorm on how to best fool the public into believing things that are not true.
Sometimes this is accomplished by simply making up new slogans that sound good but are terribly misleading. Take, for example, “clean coal.” There was never any difference between the old, dirty coal and the new “clean coal.” It has always been among the most polluting of energy sources and calling it “clean” didn’t make it any better. Nevertheless, the coal industry spent millions promoting “clean coal” as if they had invented something really new and different. Politicians from coal mining states quickly picked up on the new term and used it repeatedly to defend the coal industry from government regulation. And to a large degree, and to the detriment of the planet and our efforts to address climate change, it worked. Power plants across the country continue to pollute our air by burning coal for cheap electricity.
Greenwashing can also be accomplished by having a company which has a reputation for polluting the environment develop and market a product that is clearly better for the environment. For instance, the largest lawn chemical company in the United States, also known as one the largest polluters of our environment, has produced a line of “organic” lawn products. Yes, the organic lawn product is safer for people, pets and the environment, but let’s not kid ourselves.
The company is still manufacturing and selling tens of millions of dollars of “Weed ‘n Feed” products, which contain a pesticide called 2,4-D, one of two ingredients that made up the infamous Agent Orange that defoliated Vietnam and caused so much cancer and birth defects among indigenous peoples and American servicemen and their families. Is their organic product good? Yes. Does it excuse their pollution or their continuing poisoning of the American public and their pets? No, it does not.
Sometimes greenwashing is accomplished by ignoring much larger issues. Such is the case with plastic soda bottles, which are polluting our world and even contaminating our own bodies. Soda manufacturers, anxious to avoid any government regulation, are in the middle of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to convince Americans that the plastic pollution problem is really just a recycling problem. If only Americans will help the soda companies “get every bottle back,” the problem will be neatly solved!
This campaign conveniently ignores the fact that less than 5% of plastic is actually recycled. Even with a concentrated public effort, the great majority of plastic bottles will continue to end up in the garbage where they will either be dumped into landfills or incinerated, or end up in windblown piles of trash along the perimeters of parking lots or open fields. Many will end up in our streams, lakes and oceans where nature will eventually break the plastic down into microplastics.
Plastic, of course, is not a pure product. It starts its life as a fossil fuel – mostly natural gas that is extracted from deep underground and brings its own set of environmental pollution issues. As raw materials are combined to produce the myriad plastic products that now fill our lives (try to buy something that isn’t plastic or doesn’t comes in plastic packaging – it’s really hard!), chemicals are added for various purposes; to make the plastic hard or soft or to make it go easily through the extruding process or release from machine molds without sticking. These chemicals, embedded in the plastic bottles, are transferred to us when we drink or eat from them and are released into the environment as plastic waste is incinerated or when it degrades into microplastics. Other chemicals that are persistent and widespread in the environment are attracted to and “attach” themselves to plastic particles, adding to their toxicity.
Microplastics are ingested by fish, birds and other animals and eventually make their way up the food chain where they end up on our dinner plates. What is the impact of microplastics on the environment? How do these chemicals get into our bodies and are children particularly vulnerable? These questions and others are now the subject of a growing area of scientific research. It will take many years to fully understand the potential harm, but meanwhile plastic bottles from soda companies will continue to be a major source of pollution.
Some forms of greenwashing are done by distraction. Real estate developers, for instance, often tout the great, but purely speculative and aspirational environmental “benefits” of their massive residential developments and promised “perks” while ignoring the fact that adding hundreds more people to a community, with their cars, their trash, their water, their electricity consumption and their sewage will have an enormous environmental impact. Add to this the impact of toxic construction materials and the maintenance of properties with pesticides and fertilizers, and it should make anyone think twice about the wisdom of allowing this to happen, especially in environmentally sensitive areas and already densely developed regions.
There are so many reasons to keep the “built” environment from encroaching on our open space, from saving carbon-capturing old growth trees and preserving natural recharge areas for underground aquifers to preserving natural habitat for endangered species. And a question I always ask is, where are the solar panels or the geothermal systems in their plans? I’m afraid this would interfere with the goals of maximizing profits.
Actual, legitimate environmental efforts to restore natural areas to their original state or clean up areas that have been contaminated are laudable, but those that are intended only to mask actual intentions are not, especially with the threats to our environment at a critical point.
When it comes to helping us sort out the truth from the not-quite-truth, our federal government isn’t helping. There are Truth in Advertising laws, of course, but most greenwashing scams skirt around those laws and deliver half-truths that have just enough truth to be plausible and not per se illegal. But Mother Nature isn’t being fooled.
