We live in world where marketeers will do anything to buck the latest trends and dress their products with the emblems of credibility. This practice when applied to green issues has been called for a while greenwashing. Imagine Coca-Cola trying to stoke up its green credentials. The company has actually, although it has been accused of doing very bad things in India. But…
Companies that genuinely have green credentials shouldn’t be quiet about their achievements for fear of being lumped together with the fakers. So says Jerry Stifelman, a brand strategist. He calls this tendency greenhushing, the opposite of greenwashing and he says says it’s as bad as.
It’s a tricky business world out there indeed. Take the example of this piece of news that came out yesterday via AFP. “Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, plans to become an expert in another, cleaner field of energy by investing in solar power”, says the story. Is it greenwash or the genuine article? The country’s oil minister talks about plans on solar power and research into “carbon capture and storage programmes to develop technology allowing carbon dioxide to be extracted from the atmosphere and stored underground”. It sounds very worthy and noble, and I really hope these plans will come to fruition. But I have become increasingly like Thomas when it comes to green statements from enterprises that traditionally have been sources of pollution: I have to see it to believe it.
