At the dawn of environmental consciousness — dated September 1962 for historical convenience, when Silent Spring was published — everything seemed so easy. Not pollute. He loves the land. Think good thoughts. The only ones we expected to have a hard time were the suppliers of DDT and the nuclear power plants. For the rest of us, it was about democratically rehabilitating the robber barons of the biosphere.
Nearly half a century later, we’ve come to realize that it’s not just people with “Inc.” at the end of their names who are to blame for the environmental damage. We have, in Pogo’s immortal phrase, the political cartoon of the aforementioned decade, “we found the enemy, and he is us.” Today, we measure the carbon footprint of giant corporations, as well as individual users of their products. And we are discovering that it is not so easy to keep that imprint to the size that consciousness allows.
Consider the case of Stanley Fish, a law professor who writes a column for the New York Times: In a recent cri de coeur called “I am, therefore I pollute,” he complains about the difficulties of being environmentally correct. Willing to go to the trouble and expense to consume responsibly, there are obstacles to overcome, such as lying merchants. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of the paper towels, facial tissues and toilet paper we buy, is a good example. Professor Fish writes that KC “does not use recycled fiber”, as he had promised, “and instead” sources its fiber from virgin wood harvested from … North America’s boreal forest … one of the most important in the world.”
Fish recounts his struggles trying to renovate his and his wife’s thirty-year-old kitchen. When they were informed that shipping and warehousing the wood ordered for the new cabinets en route would add intolerably to their kitchen’s carbon footprint, they canceled the order. But even after placing an order with a nearby lumber dealer who promised to plant a tree to replace the one they cut down for his cabinets, Fish wondered how he could be sure his Forestry Stewardship Council certificate could be believed. if the FSC people are the most honest explorers, how was he supposed to know the label wasn’t forged?
Professor Fish’s overwhelming experience with businesses that are less than honest about their greenery is nothing new. The name for this is “green wash”. The Oxford English Dictionary defines greenwashing as “disinformation spread by an organization to present an environmentally responsible public image”. Lexicographers say that greenwashing stems from whitewashing, covering up bad deeds by putting an innocent face on them. (It also resonates etymologically with “brainwashing,” a system of coercive mind control perpetrated by the Chinese Communists on American prisoners during the Korean War.)
The term greenwashing was coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in a 1986 essay on the hotel industry’s practice of putting up green signs in hotel rooms, promoting the reuse of guest towels, ostensibly to “save the environment.” “. Westerveld found that it had little or nothing to do with the environment. The only thing that “saved” the hotels “green campaign” in most cases was the cost of replacing worn towels with new ones. Westerveld called it “green wash”.
Since then, Westerveld and others have recorded numerous cases of greenwashing. Those most to blame for environmental damage seem to be those who greenwash the most. The oil industry has been a notorious green washer. Chevron’s “People Do” campaign became a landmark in greenwashing; 15 years of advertisements showing the oil industry’s alleged deep concern for the environment.
Chevron and its allies in the oil field, BP, Exxon Mobil and others, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars calling themselves green. BP even went so far as to change its logo to a green and yellow sunburst design. Last year, coal interests spent $28 million on an advertising campaign to convince Americans that coal is a clean energy alternative. In his “Greenwashing” column in The Guardian, Fred Pearce called “clean coal” the “ultimate oxymoron of climate change”: “pure, absolute greenwashing.”
Of course, green self-promotion has not been limited to oil companies. In 2009, the European division of McDonald’s changed the color of its logos from yellow and red to yellow and green. Kimberly Clark has been sued for her claim of “Pure and Natural” diapers in green packaging. The product just so happens to use organic cotton on the outside and add a bit of aloe and vitamin E, but keep the same old petrochemical gel on the inside.
It has been said, and rightly so, that “scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” Many of us, like Professor Stanley Fish, have become somewhat cynical about concern for the environment due to decades of clever corporate greenwashing. However, we are not defenseless. We can still buy and use products wisely and responsibly, that is, if we have reliable information about companies and their products.
