Wrong. Is this too good to be true? As Fred Pearce, author of The Guardian’s Greenwash column, bluntly puts it, of course it is! BMW promotes the ActiveHybrid X6 as “eco-friendly” because its carbon emissions are 20% less than the regular X6. However, Pearce notes that the Hybrid X6 official CO2 emissions rating with the EU is 231 grams per kilometre. This is a far cry from the EU’s 2012 goal of 120 grams for average emissions in new cars. You cannot compare it to other hybrids because it is quite literally in a class of its own, with emissions twice that of the Toyota Prius. How is this car “eco-friendly”? More importantly; how are they managing to promote the ActiveHybrid X6 as “eco-friendly”? Sadly the case of the Hybrid X6 is one of too many. It is pure and utter Greenwashing; a fib, a distraction, a tall-tale. Greenwashing is the practice of companies to attach some type of environmental claim to their products or policies. These claims are often unsubstantiated or irrelevant and used to mislead consumers. To put it simply, when a company starts spending more money on promoting their environmental claim to fame rather than on environmentally sound practices, it’s time to worry. Futerra, a communications agency based in London, appropriately describes Greenwash as an old concept wrapped in a very modern incarnation. Examples of Greenwash emerged as early as the 70s. The term ‘Greenwashing’ was, however, only coined in 1986 by
environmentalist Jay Westerveld. In an essay Westerveld identified the misleading practice of the hotel industry in which they promoted the re-use of towels by the guests to ‘save the environment’. However he found that in most instances these hotels made no substantial effort towards environmentally sound practices, such as waste recycling. Being green and environmentally friendly went from being responsible to trendy to profitable. And so it began. To Greenwash, or not to Greenwash. In 2007 TerraChoice, a leading environmental marketing agency based in North America, conducted a study in which they found that over 95% of 1 018 common products surveyed were found guilty of Greenwashing. The findings were so shocking that vicepresident Scot Case was convinced the researchers had butchered the study. After a redo the results remained the same and TerraChoice identified “The Six Sins of Greenwashing”. The first is the Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off, a common misleading strategy used in 57% of environmental claims. It focuses the consumer’s attention on a single attribute of a product that makes it appear green, overemphasising this while understating or completely ignoring other, more environmentally dangerous consequences of the product. For example, you may think you’re doing your share in saving the environment when you buy ‘energy-saving’ electronics. But at the same time, they may consist of materials that are