choices regarding cars, light-bulbs, food, clothing, travel, etc. But it has also been co-opted by companies who see it as a means of marketing a product. For example, many green activists in the 1970s would not have predicted that nuclear power would find renewed interest by promoting its green (carbon dioxide free) credentials. Regardless of what you feel about nuclear power, we can probably assume that raising its profile was not high on the list of hoped-for outcomes for many green activists.
In 2010, assets in the US where environmental performance was a major component were valued at US$30.7 trillion, compared with US$639 billion in 1995 (Delmas & Burbano 2011). Being green is definitely part of big business. This leads to companies labelling products as green on a rather spurious basis. Like ‘fat-free’ or ‘diet’ in food labelling, ‘eco-friendly’, ‘natural’ or ‘green’ are labels that often hide other sins or are dubious in their claim. This is termed greenwashing, for example, the Airbus A380 reportedly has 17% less carbon emissions than a Boeing 747, which is to be welcomed, but adverts promoting it as an environmentally friendly option would seem to be stretching the definition somewhat. Similarly BP’s series of ‘green’ adverts aimed at promoting a ‘beyond petroleum’ message provide a good example of how the green message can be adopted by companies who would seem to be fundamentally at odds with it.
Environmental marketing agency Terra Choice, identified ‘7 sins of greenwashing’ (Terra Choice 2010), analogies of which we will see in the open world, so it’s worth listing them here:
- Sin of the Hidden Trade-off – whereby an unreasonably narrow set of attributes is used to claim greenness, without attention to other important environmental issues.
