Volkswagen make clean diesel engines. Like really clean diesel.
Or so they claimed.
Their Clean Diesel technology was a key selling feature of some of their most popular vehicles. Then in 2015, it all fell apart when the US Environmental Protection Agency found that real world NOx emissions from their vehicles were forty times higher than in laboratory tests. To make it worse, this was not an accident. Volkswagen had programmed their engine management system to identify when a vehicle was going through an emissions test and modify engine performance to reduce emissions during the testing cycle. This was not only misleading, it was illegal. The deception affected 11 million cars worldwide and became known as the Dieselgate scandal, probably the best known example of corporate greenwashing.
If you’re not familiar with it, Investopedia defines greenwashing as:
… the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company's products are more environmentally sound. Greenwashing is considered an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company's products are environmentally friendly.
Greenwashing presents a genuine threat to our attempts to use business as a force for good and develop more sustainable products. It simultaneously over shadows the real progress being made by honest companies while slowly eroding public trust in the concept of green businesses, products and services.
False or misleading environmental claims from businesses are becoming increasingly common and I think there’s a good reason. I wrote last week about how customers do want to buy more eco-friendly products but they also want to buy the products that meet their own priorities best. They want to buy the thing they really want but would love to believe that it’s eco-friendly. The simplest way for companies to address this desire is to simply say that their products are eco-friendly, even if they are not. It is cheap and effective! Greenwashing makes commercial sense, so long as you don’t care and you don’t get caught.
This leaves businesses who genuinely care about producing more environmentally friendly products and services in a strange position. How do they compete in a marketplace where everyone claims to be green? How do they know which suppliers and are actually responsible? How do they decide which corporate clients to take on? How do they talk about their own green credentials without sounding like they are greenwashing?
As greenwashing becomes more pervasive, these questions become more potent.
Our dance with the greenwashers
Over the past year, our team at Wholegrain Digital have been doing an increasing amount of digital sustainability consulting work and we’ve found that it attracts a different type of client from those we normally work with. We mostly create websites for purpose led businesses, charities and the public sector, but our consulting services have been attracting multinational corporations of the kind that would not normally be our clients. When these corporations come to us asking for help reducing the environmental impact of their online presence, it could be a fantastic opportunity to contribute to real progress or it could be an invitation to participate in their greenwashing.
We found that our Ethical Screening Process for client projects had not been designed around this type of work and that we needed to take a different approach. We posted an update stating that:
We have decided as a team that this screening process will not apply to digital sustainability consulting, where we are helping reduce the environmental impact of an organisation’s digital presence. However, there may still be cases where we decide to decline this type of work if we feel uncomfortable with the organisation or feel that the digital sustainability work is being used to support a greenwashing campaign.
Essentially we were saying that we wanted to help anyone who was genuine about reducing their environmental impact and not using it to greenwash. That sounds simple, but we soon learned that it’s hard to tell who’s who. As if the universe wanted to test us, we got an enquiry from, you guessed it … Volkswagen.
This was particularly awkward because I actually used the Dieselgate scandal in my book, Sustainable Web Design, as an example of software being used for greenwashing. I never expected Volkswagen to come knocking on our door. But knock they did. Now we were in a dilemma. In the absence of a clear cut ethical screening process, it was hard to tell at face value whether we should do this work or not.
We decided to hear them out and ask about their goals and motives just like any other client. I was surprised to find that among the people that we spoke to, there seemed to be a genuine passion to learn how to integrate sustainability into everything that they were doing across the organisation. In fact, they even talked to us about the need for a transparent, evidence based approach to ensure that there was no greenwashing. So we decided to go ahead. We did some interesting assignments, including advising on a low carbon website for the launch of the ID4 electric car in Canada. I’ve written before about why I think this project was a good idea, and I was pleased to see that it did seem to capture many people’s imaginations and get them thinking about the environmental impact of digital services. However, I also overheard some grumblings that this project might be yet another example of Volkswagen greenwashing. Were they right?
It highlights how hard it can be to judge greenwashing. In some cases greenwashing is calculated and blatant, but in other cases it is more nuanced. Some things that look like greenwashing might have a more legitimate story behind them that wasn’t communicated well. Some people in large organisations may be working on projects that they genuinely believe will do good, not knowing that intentions are less pure higher up the organisation. Some things that appear as greenwash might be errors of judgement by people genuinely trying their best. And some things might be so complicated that nobody can quite tell which side of the line they are on.
In our case, there is a risk that large corporations could embrace a concept like digital sustainability as a cheap way to make themselves look good without addressing the bigger impacts of their core business. We have turned down some projects where we thought this was the case and taken on work for others where we felt their intentions were legitimate. But it’s very hard to know if we’ve got it right.
Some questions that we can ask are:
What are the client’s motives for the project? Do they seem mostly interested in their image or in the environmental benefits?
Who will be involved in the project? Are they all marketing people or are there sustainability professionals, designers and engineers eager to learn?
Is the organisation committed to becoming more sustainable? Can they demonstrate that there is a more widespread sustainability programme within the organisation that the digital work will feed into, or is the project an anomaly?
Questions like these can help guide us, but the final decision may simply come down to gut feeling.
Telling the true story
While choosing clients has been a key challenge for us in the battle against greenwash, it isn’t the main greenwashing challenge for most businesses. More often the challenge is how to communicate your own green credentials in a world full of greenwash.
Businesses that truly care about their environmental impact are often competing with less scrupulous businesses, who make green claims without backing them up. This can make the companies with real integrity feel that they need to try even harder to show how they are even greener. If they're not careful, this could lead them into the trap of fighting greenwash with greenwash.
So what should we do?
I hear an increasing number of people suggest that the answer is to stop using generic terms like green and sustainable. I’ve even heard of reports stating that customers don’t like these words. However, as I highlighted last week, such reports can be misleading. After all, if consumers don’t like these words, why do so many of the world’s most savvy marketers use them? I think there is a place for using words that the public are familiar with even if they have their flaws. Using language that is easy for the audience to understand is simply good communication.
Rather than arguing over specific words, I believe the most important thing is to ensure that our words have substance. Greenwashers try to pretend that everything is perfect without providing much in the way of evidence, or even worse, providing false evidence. We can counter this not by trying to prove that we are more perfect, but by telling the full story, warts and all.
Think about it. Do you trust people who always boast about how perfect they are and never admit their mistakes?
I didn’t think so.
It is the people who admit when they are wrong who we trust the most to be honest with us. This is the same for brands as it is for individuals. When we tell the truth openly and honestly, including our imperfections, we demonstrate our integrity and build real trust with our customer base.
It’s easier said than done though. Just the idea of publicly admitting our shortcomings can make us feel vulnerable and anxious, especially in the era of social media trolling and in a marketplace where our competitors claim to be saints. However, if we are going to compete with the greenwashers then we need to be brave. By telling the truth, we harness the opportunity to earn real trust and loyalty from our customers that the greenwashers cannot.
All good stories involve challenges, mistakes and uncertainties, and our customers want to hear them. So be brave. Tell your true story and take your customers with you on the journey to a better place.
I would love to hear your experiences of greenwashing and how you have dealt with it, both as a customer and as a business. Please do leave a comment below or drop me a message. And if you enjoyed this, please do subscribe and share it with people you know.
P.S. I’m aware that I have used cars as examples three weeks in a row. Next week’s post will be a car free zone.
Hi Tom, great article. Greenwashing is an extremely sticky subject. I subscribe to the idea that (apart from a few examples, many in the fast fashion sector), companies are not setting out to deceive when it comes to their green credentials.
That said, I also believe that people do not have a good enough understanding of the world of sustainability. Whilst intentions are nearly always good, they will often only talk about the small things they are changing without addressing the big (scary) things - an example would be an airline switching to re-useable cups and a paperless office. Good, but what about all those fuel emissions?
Another problem is not considering everything to the end of its life. A good example would be changing the packaging of something to 'compostable'. More often than not, this packaging is only compostable in industrial composters which is useless to most households and will have to go into landfill.
What I'm trying to say is that intentions are often very good, but execution can be bad. Going back to your three questions, I think the last one is the most important: can they demonstrate there is a properly thought out, business-wide, sustainability programme?
Great points. As I redesign my website to become as sustainable as possible, I plan to document this journey on the site and in a "Sustainability Statement". But I will be clear that this is part of a journey, that it is not perfect but that it is part of the philosophy that I preach of "every little bit counts." Honesty and transparency are not flaws but are in fact quite the opposite. By showing you are evolving, learning and yes, making mistakes, you convey that you are in fact human. That I think is more encouraging for others thinking of implementing sustainability changes than insisting you are "sustainable" with no context, evidence or genuine commitment.