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What is 'greenwashing'?

In this video, Mark Shayler explains the concept of greenwashing and how marketers can avoid it amidst increasing regulatory scrutiny. The full transcript is available below the video for reference.

Transcript

Hello. My name is Mark Shayler and I've been asked to give you a kind of top-line description of what Greenwashing is now.

This phrase has grown in importance in weight and also in responsibility over the last, maybe 30 years. The first green claims codes that we saw published in the UK were in the early 1990s when I started off.

So what is Greenwashing? Firstly it's a term that's used to describe the practice of companies giving a false impression or misleading impression about the environmental performance of their product, services or their business.

Now it doesn't always mean lying, but it often does. It can mean, I guess, deception or quick look over here, a badger and then over there is their environmental impact. We see that a lot. Look, we've got this lovely recycling project for toys (Great!) but actually, we deforest over here (Not great!). And this approach just won't cut it anymore.

You know, as an environmental consultancy, we start with the biggest environmental impact. That's gotta be where where you go. There are some totemic impacts that are worth considering, but in essence, it's our biggest impact that matters. So it's a bit like a company saying that their products are green or eco-friendly, without substantiating that. You have to have evidence. Or by hiding the negative environmental impacts that are also associated with their product, picking a totem and focusing on that is not good enough anymore, it's all changed.

Now I'm speaking to you from Leicestershire in the UK and there is currently, no specific legal definition of what Greenwashing is. However, businesses making environmental claims must comply with wider legislation and I'll go into that in more detail.

but the first one of these is quite old. It's from 2008 and it's called the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations and it prohibits misleading advertising and the UK's Competitions and Markets Authorities (CMA) has also issued another green claims code and it's well worth having a look at because it aims to help businesses avoid making misleading environmental claims. Now in Europe, where we once were, the approach is similar. There really isn't much of a definition, but the European Commission is currently working on new criteria to prevent companies from making misleading environmental claims, and this includes a proposed law on green claims to ensure that environmental labels and environmental claims are reliable and verifiable.

Now, why am I talking about this? We're not in Europe anymore. Well, it's very likely that we'll adopt the same approach and my guess is you don't just sell to the UK, you sell all the way across Europe.

So, to avoid greenwashing as a business, here are a few tips:

  1. Avoid all vague language. Be really specific about your environmental claims and avoid broad terms like eco-friendly or nature-friendly, all of these kind of like nothing words need to be removed.
  2. Be honest. Just stop lying. If you're working towards environmental goals, be transparent about your journey and don't be tempted to overstate your achievements, just cause you're offset, you're not there yet.
  3. Third-party verification. We often do this. We get asked to verify what people have done. Get your environmental claims verified by an independent consultant or an accredited organisation.
  4. Educate and inform. Make sure your customers, employees, and stakeholders are informed about the actual environmental impact of your products and services we have to publish on the service side, Scope 1 and Scope 2 environmental or carbon reports and that's likely to be extended to Scope 3. That’s a big messy chunk that is, it needs to be broken down.
  5. Support claims with evidence. Always back up your environmental claims with solid evidence and data and make that available.

Those 5 tips, by following those guidelines, you can make genuine green claims and build trust with your customers, who are increasingly - 67% of them - classing themselves as kind of purpose-driven consumers, but they're looking for more environmentally responsible products or they're looking to feel less guilty about what they buy that is in reality, what's happening.

Now the three letters that I haven't mentioned yet are ASA, the Advertising Standards Authority. This is an unlikely environmental regulator, but it is becoming one. It plays a crucial role in the UK in regulating advertising and calling out Greenwashing. I'm just going to summarise their role, but their role and their reach are different. they are really extending their reach.

  1. Regulatory oversight. The ASA ensures that advertisements are truthful, socially responsible, and not misleading, particularly concerning environmental claims.
  2. Climate change and environment project. The ASA has launched a project to address the climate crisis. Look, the climate crisis is the single biggest environmental threat we face. Yes, plastic is important, yes, but it's nowhere near, it's not even the biggest threat to the oceans, right, that is, again, climate change. The climate crisis is huge. So the ASA are trying to ensure that environmental claims and advertising are not misleading, or irresponsible in that way. And it includes sector-specific reviews, research into consumer understanding of environmental claims and very, very targeted investigations.
  3. Then they've got a role in terms of guidance and education. The ASA updates resources and creates educational material to help advertisers understand the rules and environmental claims, and they've also developed an e-learning module covering the rules on climate change and the environment. It's really worth looking at this,
  4. But now this is where it gets interesting - enforcement. The ASA enforces the codes and has pledged to use technology-assisted monitoring to identify and take action against advertisers who engage in Greenwashing. They are likely to be the biggest enforcement agency when it comes to green claims,
  5. Full life cycle claims. The ASA is looking for advertisers to base their environmental claims on the full life cycle of the advertised product unless stated otherwise. And must not mislead consumers about the product's total environmental impact. So you can set a tighter boundary, you just need to be so, so clear about it.
  6. Now the ASA doesn't just work alone, it works closely with other regulatory bodies like the CMA and is doing so to develop guidance on misleading claims. We're gonna see a snowballing effect here. We're gonna see many of these organisations beginning to pull together in order to enforce and regulate.
  7. Sector-specific inquiries. I mentioned earlier that the ASA conducts inquiries into specific sectors, such as energy waste and transport, and they do this in order to analyse the environmental claims made by companies. Now this means that this is a deep dive, right, they're going way, way deeper than the public would expect them to go.

So look, we've got Greenwashing. We then went from Greenwashing into that lovely portmanteau that my friend Claire came up with, Greencocking - peacocking and greenwashing mixed together is kind of Greencocking and that's, look at me. look how great we are, we've got this amazing project

And then we moved into Greenhushing, where we're so concerned about being caught out or we're so secretive about the things that we're doing that we are just beginning to keep quiet. Now when we keep quiet about these issues, no one wins, because it's important that we celebrate success and we can only do that if we work together and that we try and lift the whole market and we can only do that if we have these conversations, but you’ve gotta you gotta be honest about this stuff. There’s no space for lying.

And then the last phrase that I want to talk about came up the other week called Greenwishing. So this is the aspiration of your performance. We will be Net Zero by 2050. Really? We would reduce by 50% our carbon impact by 2030. Really? In six years’ time? Show me your landing plan. Show me your glide strip. Show me how you're going to do that.

It's no good, the job isn't done with the announcements or the target. The job is done when the job is done. So Greenwashing, Greencocking, Greenhushing, Greenwishing, these are really, really important things. I wish you all the best in navigating them.

The secret is really simple. Just tell the truth.