Saturday, 11 September 2021
Definition: Greenwashing is a marketing tool employed by companies to give consumers the illusion they are doing more to help protect the environment than they are.
The term was first coined in 1986 by the American environmentalist Jay Westerveld, when he was asked to reuse a towel in a hotel in order to, supposedly, reduce water usage.
One of the areas in which Greenwashing is most prevalent is in the fast fashion industry. The young environmental campaigner, Greta Thunberg is probably not the first to have written about this, but perhaps she is the most high-profile. In an interview for the Scandinavian edition of Vogue Magazine in August this year she claims that she hasn't bought any new clothes for three years and those she bought before then were second-hand. I don't mean to denigrate her claim, but I can beat her record (if that is what it is). I haven't bought any clothes for the last fifteen years, but then I am three times as old as she is and no longer growing. Nor am I fashion-conscious, a fact that some might consider a serious flaw in my personality.
The fast fashion industry isn't the only one which uses Greenwashing tactics to coerce the public into believing it's helping to save the planet. The worst offender, arguably, is the oil industry. Let's face it, oil excavation and deep-sea mining will never be activities that don't damage the Earth's resources. Yet BP and others would like to convince us that their operations increasingly use greener methods. Well, if that isn't Greenwashing the facts, I don't know what is. And, don't even get me started on the issue of burning fossil fuels. Perhaps I am extremely naïve or overly critical — or maybe it's a bit of both — but I find it hard to believe that the carbon emissions produced can be adequately contained, despite multiple claims of the proliferation of carbon capture plants around the world. Are these storage facilities really equipped to do the job properly? Not to mention the fact that building such plants is eyewateringly expensive.
I am willing to be persuaded that in using carbon capture plants it is possible to keep carbon emissions below 1.5% as recommended in the so-called 'Paris Agreement', negotiated at COP21, the UN Climate Change Conference, in December 2015, but in the meantime I remain unconvinced that these plants adequately meet the job description and that sufficient other measures are being taken to limit carbon emissions across all industries worldwide. There is still an awful lot of Greenwashing around but, hopefully, the public's increasing awareness of the damage carbon emissions are doing to our planet is making it more critical of companies claiming to do more to protect the environment than they are. I say: "no more Greenwashing, please!"
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NOTES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreenwashingGreta Thunberg: ethical fast fashion is ‘pure greenwashing’https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/aug/10/greta-thunberg-ethical-fast-fashion-greenwashing?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2tcbMlSCjIERmDRI7SjiUIi0Yl0le5Ec9JNw8jIx_SWL3B6Da_yLD9dQ8_
What is greenwashing? Everything you need to know about fashion’s faux sustainabilityhttps://www.womanandhome.com/us/fashion/greenwashing-fashion-guide/
The Disastrous Effects Of Greenwashing You Need To Knowhttps://www.panaprium.com/blogs/i/greenwashing-effects
UK’s largest carbon capture project to prevent equivalent of 22,000 cars’ emissions from polluting the atmosphere from 2021 (Gov.UK)
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uks-largest-carbon-capture-project-to-prevent-equivalent-of-22000-cars-emissions-from-polluting-the-atmosphere-from-2021
Paris Agreement (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement
World’s biggest machine capturing carbon from air turned on in Icelandhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/worlds-biggest-plant-to-turn-carbon-dioxide-into-rock-opens-in-iceland-orca
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