How Good Companies Can Sidestep the Confusion Caused by Greenwashing

You’ve heard the one about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. But did you know that it was actually painted?

Or what we in the marketing world call “greenwashing.” 

Consumers are increasingly demanding environmentally friendly products and socially responsible behavior from brands, which is a significant net positive in addressing the world’s challenges. Companies have a way of responding to customers because it’s in their own interests to do so. Simple as that.

But at the same time, this trend also creates fertile space for the rise of a murky, companion alter ego of the marketing world, one with selfish aims, and that’s greenwashing.

Modern consumers have developed an increasingly acute ability to suss out marketing fabrications, but the forces of greenwashing are dark, well funded, and, unfortunately, very smart. (We like to think we represent the lighter side as a positive force for good.) These forces are masters at obfuscating, oversimplifying, and using propaganda to cast products or complete industries with an environmentally favorable green glow.

Hotels Industry’s Dirty Laundry Gives Birth To Greenwashing

For those not familiar with the concept of greenwashing, AKA “Green Sheen,’ it was coined by a writer named Jay Westervelt. He wrote an essay in 1986 about the hotel industry and its duplicitous practice of asking guests to reuse towels in order to help the hotel “save the environment.” (We wrote about this vestigial practice of the hotel industry, which to this day lingers in many guest rooms like a rotting fish, in an earlier blog. “Has the Word ‘Authentic’ lost its Authenticity?”)

The term quickly gained marketing traction—which in a sad way probably also spoke to its effectiveness as a strategy—and in 1991 was included in the Oxford English Dictionary with this definition “Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.”

The Battle For Truth In Labeling Goes On

In varying hues of green, the concept hasn’t gone away and is still prevalent in today’s marketplace. For one, product packaging is rife with misleading claims and labeling designed for misdirection. 

Here’s a current favorite example—and just one of many, many instances—the product category of “wet wipes,” used by parents with babies and metrosexuals with bottoms. Marketers design the packaging to say “flushable,” when in fact they are anything but flushable. In fact, they create a huge and costly problem for municipal water systems everywhere, and the Federal Trade Commission successfully sued a manufacturer to substantiate its “flushability” claims.

It gets more sophisticated. Industries create association groups that appear to be independent and environmentally minded. Special corporate interests also hire “independent experts” to confuse the public about science. (For a disturbing take on the subject, check out the documentary, “Merchants of Doubt.”)

Greenwashing Moves From the Environment to Social Causes

The seed is taking root in corporate social responsibility programs with marketers attaching related strategies to social impact programs and cause marketing initiatives.

One popular manifestation is the seemingly benign pitch that goes “We’re contributing a dollar to a worthy cause for every product you buy.”

What this amounts to is the application of lipstick on a pig. The company’s intention is to part you from your hard-earned dollars attaching its brand reputation to a nonprofit cause without any intentional commitment or long-lasting social value.

This presents obvious challenges for consumers. It creates confusion in a marketplace already crowded with thousand of “like” products that are struggling to differentiate via marketers crowing their claims of goodness.

But it also creates pitfalls for companies that DO have a positive and intentional story of social or environmental impact. 

Three Ways to Prove Your Proof

We specialize in building brands for purpose-driven companies so we’ve spent a lot of time learning how to effectively and appropriately communicate the stories of companies with products, services or business models that have a societal or environmental benefit.

So how do honest companies stand clear from this confusion? Among many options, we’ll focus briefly on three ways, ranging in complexity and cost, to achieve clarity in the marketplace and help you validate your company’s environmental or social impact programs.

1. Speak Softly And Carry A Big, Factual Stick

The first way doesn’t cost much, but requires a little self-restraint—not always the calling card of marketers looking to stand out. Try to simply be thoughtful and fact-based in communicating your environmental and social impact stories. We’re always surprised at the amount of inappropriate chest beating that goes on in this space, and if you’re interested in more of our thinking along these lines, you can check out our whitepaper on the subject, “How To Make Your Brand More Trustworthy.”

(The opposite of this chest beating hyperbole is “greenblushing,” or when companies don’t say a peep about their good works for fear of overhyping their actions. You can read Greg LeBarr’s interesting take on this here.)

2. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Don’t be afraid to talk dollars. You need to be clear and transparent in the funding mechanisms for your programs and invest in them not only strategically, but appropriately. Here’s a simple rubric for you to consider: when companies spend more on advertising their environmental programs than funding them, that’s greenwash.¹

3. Build Trust Through Independent Verification

Substantiate your commitment through independent verification or audits of your company’s environmental policies and social impact programs. Third-party audits bring credibility and measurement to the “proof” party.

There’s obvious interest in this avenue because consumers need and want it to help them navigate the purchasing decision process. A quick Google search supports this with a “social responsibility verification” query yielding 3.4 million results and 25.8 million results for “social responsibility audits.”

These programs convey commitment—the fabric of establishing consumer trust—because they require investments of time and capital, and when reported openly and unflinchingly, generate goodwill across audience segments.

By the simple act of measurement, they also provide a foundation for improving your performance against stated objectives longitudinally over time.

The Solution Is Part Of The Problem

Here at Oliver Russell, we’ve chosen to certify as a B Corporation, which gives us a valid framework for verifying, measuring, communicating, reporting, and improving our performance on environmental and social measures.

There are many, many other verification programs out there ranging from organic certification to supply chain management to human rights to fair labor practices and beyond. And the beyond here is pretty big.

All of which is helpful, but the plethora of certification marks in its own way contributes to confusion in the marketplace and unwittingly creates the opening for “greenwashers” to operate in the verification landscape. This points to a gap in the marketplace for a singular unifying mark that addresses or aggregates the many valid and fragmented certifications into one standard that consumers can quickly understand and apply value to—a big, hairy, audacious goal if ever there were one.

Perhaps that’s a subject for another day.

1 http://thegreenlifeonline.org/greenwash101/