Greenwashing is a gateway drug

The Greenwash Brigade

In Amy Westervelt's recent Sustainable Industries interview with L. Hunter Lovins, Lovins makes the case that greenwashing is good. "Hypocrisy is the first step to real change." I'm inclined to agree.

Greenwashing is a symptom of the business community's recognition that the public is demanding that they do better, and prepared to reward those that do. The quickest response is simply to re-brand / spin your company to make it look greener (greenwash). Lovins cites General Electric's "ecomagination" ad campaign as an example of profound greenwashing, with GE basically taking their existing products and slapping an 'eco' label on them (remember the dancing elephant?).

This is rampant in the building products market as well. A roofing product manufacturer recently asked me how they could make their product "look more green." Their marketing materials touted the environmental attributes of their product (greenwash), and he wanted input on whether they got the spin right for architects. I resisted the urge to choke him, and instead encouraged him to deliberately asses the environmental impacts of their current operations and identify strategies for reducing/improving that impact. Identify some areas for improvement (less toxic materials, reduce waste, etc.), make improvements, and then tout those improvements once there is a story to tell.

The greenwashing is free, but once you hold yourself up as 'green(er)', increased scrutiny follows. Plus, no one likes to be a hypocrite. Once you say you're doing it, there's a tendency to start doing it. In GE's case, Lovins points out that once GE saw their 'eco' products had twice the sales volume of the regular products, "all of a sudden a company without a green bone in its body has one--attached to its wallet."

April 5, 2008 by Jim Nicolow
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tags: architecture building GE Lovins marketing

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina. He is currently pursuing a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.

Heidi Siegelbaum is president of Siegelbaum & Associates, which specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Increasingly, her focus is on sustainable tourism and green hotels. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst for the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the executive committee of the Northwest Natural Resource Group, which brokers FSC forest certification and landowner business services.

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The Greenwash Brigade