Greenwashing

April 22 is Earth Day and I don’t even remember it! There are even environmentalists who believe there isn’t much to celebrate this Earth Day. Although it is designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment – yet, the level of harmful emissions marches ever upward, and the destruction of critical natural habitats continues unabated. As the failure of the Copenhagen climate-change talks demonstrated, the political will to tackle these escalating threats to our planet on a worldwide level just isn’t there. And today’s article “Earth Day 40 years on” (p 19) in The Sun is a timely reminder that the real excitement on this issue seems to come from businesses which are falling over each other to trumpet their achievements in going green!

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Yes, Earth Day has been hijacked by big business – and they have been religiously promoting it as if they are the saviors of the planet! So many companies nowadays are pitching green products. The premise behind green products is simple: replace the old, wasteful wares from unenlightened generations past with more efficient and modern counterparts. But regrettably, some of these allegedly “green” products don’t save very much energy at all. Rather some of these devices actually consume more energy than they save, defeating the original purpose of being green. Even environmental villains such as the oil companies and big agribusinesses are all disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly.

The truth is that much of what passes as corporate environmentalism is nothing more than a marketing gimmick dubbed “greenwashing” – as argued by environmentalists such as Rebecca Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network. As consumers, we shouldn't be so trusting.

Check out these ads below to see what I mean: