The concern for the environment is becoming a factor in influencing buying decisions of some consumers, however small, especially among those with the capacity for discretionary buying. Many companies have been resorting to a misleading practice called greenwashing to woo such consumers. On the other hand, environment compliance is getting reduced to just form-filling

We live in a make-believe world, where the right choice of words or an act for display but with intent to hide something, holds the spotlight. In a democracy, where periodically people take to the streets to express their dissent, coming across as doing good has become important for everyone, be it an individual, governments or businesses. Just as Photoshop ‘improves’ physical characteristics, greenwashing helps businesses adorn a façade of being environment-friendly, when the reality is farthest from it. Spin is the most sought-after skill!

Let us define greenwashing. “Greenwashing refers to the act of making false or misleading claims about the positive environmental impact that a company, product or service has on the environment. Greenwashing occurs when organizations present untrue actions or statements that appear more environmentally friendly than they actually are. The term greenwashing was first coined in 1986 by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in an article where he decried the common practice of hotels asking guests to reuse towels to help conserve energy. Westerveld claimed that those same hotels did little to help the environment and that the towel request was an act of greenwashing”.

Growing phenomenon

Since Westerveld coined it, greenwashing has grown as a phenomenon. In an outstanding article ‘Greenwashing’, Courtney Lindwall (February 9, 2023), recounts the multiple instances when businesses have tried to camouflage the harm they cause to the environment and often succeeding – (what greenwashing means). The article starts with Volkswagen’s 2009 campaign for ‘clean diesel cars’ which was later revealed as completely misleading because it had installed software that didn’t let the correct emission figures to be seen. Volkswagen was fined by the US Environment Protection Agency. As she remarks, “It can be a way for companies to continue or expand their polluting as well as related harmful behaviors, all while gaming the system or profiting off well-intentioned, sustainably minded consumers”. Incidentally, The Natural Resources Defense Council in the US set up on January 1, 1970 (www.nrdc.org) is an excellent resource on what it takes to protect the environment and all its natural resources.

In a recent article (June 2024, in Investopedia!), Adam Hayes elaborates the nuances of the practice: “In addition, greenwashing may occur when a company attempts to emphasize sustainable aspects of a product to overshadow the company’s involvement in environmentally damaging practices. Performed through the use of environmental imagery, misleading labels, and hiding tradeoffs, greenwashing is a play on the term “whitewashing,” which means using false information to intentionally hide wrongdoing, error, or an unpleasant situation in an attempt to make it seem less bad than it is”.

There are genuinely green products and the Federal Trade Commission in the US helps protect customers in many ways. In India, the Government has recognised the need to protect consumers from this practice and has announced guidelines.

Compliance: buried in bureaucracy

I have already written about the extensive human rights violations in cobalt-mining in the ‘Democratic Republic of Congo’ with some of the world’s leading companies involved, but each is able to wash its hands off behind the shield of ‘we cannot oversee what our suppliers are doing” – https://www.amazon.in/Cobalt-Red-Blood-Congo-Powers-ebook/dp/B09Y462D6Z. Except where it hurts businesses directly or indirectly, compliance has just spawned a vast bureaucracy founded on multiple forms, creating a professional service in form-filling! Coupled with the use of third-party or contract firms, this helps leading businesses ‘photoshop’ their activities.

It is hardly surprising that there is a growing number of job opportunities in ‘environment compliance’, or ‘environment audit’, which will grow into an industry by itself! There are forms and forms to be filled with the result that it becomes the ‘reality’. The safest way to hide something is to bury it in a vast world of forms!

This ‘environment bureaucracy’ has itself become a subject of research as evidenced by a growing literature on the subject, such as for example this one on New Zealand – . https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718520300567. The trust dimension too has figured as shown by this article ‘Environmental Bureaucracy Undermines the Trust Needed to Promote Conservation’. Nature magazine ran an interesting article on the role of international bureaucrats in climate change since many phenomena cross international borders – https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-023-00073-2.

The problem is not new; it concerned researchers more than 40 years ago. In 1982, in an essay titled Bureaucracy vs. Environment: The Environmental Cost of Bureaucratic Governance, John Baden and Richard L. Strong, discuss the matter in detail – https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2173&context=nrj. Exploring this aspect leads to the disturbing conclusion that, often, what was set up to protect, itself becomes the obstacle! To quote what I have quoted several times, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”.

Conclusion

Increasingly, the world is becoming an unequal and unstable amalgam of spheres of influence, with each sphere developing a vested interest in ‘their ways of functioning’. Amidst these competitive spheres of influence, real progress often takes a back seat. The world always manages to find new ways to arrest progress made in certain areas by creating newer and newer obstacles.