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Green is big and green is clever. But with all things big and clever, there’ll be bandwagon-jumpers.
Last year the Advertising Standards Authority received double the previous year’s number of complaints that green claims were being used to spruce up the image of organisations that didn’t deserve it.
Boo, hiss, etc. But yesterday, the cavalry arrived, in the form of a new standard issued by the Carbon Trust, which should make it easier to discern which companies are walking the talk; not just talking the talk.
The benchmark will crown UK organisations that show ‘real reductions to their emissions year-on-year’, - and simply offsetting carbon won’t wash.
“We want businesses to focus on taking action themselves and reducing their own emissions,” Harry Morrison, general manager of the Carbon Trust told BBC news.
Many firms are now trying to make up for their poor emission record by paying third-party companies to invest their money in environmentally-friendly projects such as clean energy research and tree-planting programmes.
But despite the House of Commons’ environmental audit committee saying that reforestation remains a legitimate way to tackle ‘unavoidable’ emissions, as we wrote last year, many environmental groups are critical of such schemes.
Friends of the Earth, for example, warns that offsetting can act as a ’smoke-screen’ to environmentally-damaging practices and delay “urgent action needed to cut emissions and develop alternative low-carbon solutions”. They go as far as to suggest that offsetting can encourage people to continue or even increase unnecessary polluting actions.
The slicing up of rainforests to be sold to ease company and celebrity consciences has also got a few backs up along the way. “The Amazon is not for sale”, said Brazilian President Lula da Silva after financier and government adviser Johan Eliasch bought up 400,000 acres of the rainforest in 2006.
Although offsetting is a relatively new phenomenon, and arguably does have a positive part to play, it seems it may have fallen into a long list of ‘environmentally-friendly’ declarations made by businesses that have later been found wanting.
Giving a name to the public’s increasing scepticism over ‘green’ claims, the term ‘greenwashing’ was coined in the 80s by New York environmentalist Jay Westervelt. And it seems we’re now all too aware of its meaning.
Last year’s Chatsworth FOOTSIE 100 Green Washers and Green Winners found scepticism is rife, with only 1% of respondents believing companies’ ‘green’ measures were born of genuine concern for the environment.
More likely motivation, it was felt, was for companies to protect their reputation (27%), consumer pressure (20%) and good business sense (20%).
A majority (75%) also believed that it was better for big businesses to own up to their failings with regard to environmentally-friendly practices and show willingness to make changes, rather than plaster over the cracks with something green.
But owning up to not being green is so not ‘in’.
IMAGE by Flickr user Clearly Ambiguous
