Polluters
cook up bogus environmental images
By
This
Earth Day, I’d like to warn you about “greenwashing.” That’s the practice of
corporations branding their products “eco-friendly,” even when they actually
pollute, to deceive environmentally concerned customers.
Even
if you’ve heard nothing about greenwashing, you’ve probably read about the
Volkswagen emissions scandal, “Dieselgate.”
A
few years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many Volkswagen cars being sold in America had
been outfitted with software that enabled their diesel engines to detect when
they were being tested. This allowed the engines to improve emissions
performance under controlled laboratory conditions.
But
out on the road, the engines were emitting 40 times above the nitrogen oxide pollutant levels
allowed in the United States. The software was simply covering that up.
Volkswagen
apologized for the scandal and recalled its cars. But for customers who bought
from the company thinking they were having a positive impact on the
environment, the damage was already done. Volkswagen had successfully duped
them — while also doing enormous environmental destruction.
Unfortunately,
Volkswagen is nowhere close to alone. Greenwashing has a deep history dating
back to the start of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s. Since then, no industry has been immune to
greenwashing.
In 2019, you can find this unethical business practice flourishing in the fashion, electronics, fuel, food and agriculture, and plastics industries (among others).
Take
hugely popular fashion brand H&M’s Sustainable Fashion line. On the face of it, H&M’s commitment to creating a sustainable fast
fashion business model is commendable. The brand has “pledged to become “100 percent climate positive”
by 2040 by using renewable energy and sustainable materials.
The
problem is that using this language of environmental concern numbs H&M’s
customers to the utter unsustainability of fast fashion as a concept.
For
all of H&M’s recycling endeavors, it’s still producing far more clothing
than can be used, most of which ends up in landfills after losing its appeal within
a season or two. By all metrics, fast fashion is one of the most polluting industries globally.
As
a consequence, even if H&M were to fulfill all its promises by 2040, it
would still be doing more harm than good by encouraging consumers to buy and
discard low quality products seasonally, contributing to a never-ending cycle
of waste creation.
On
the surface, many brands actually do implement policies that are better for the
environment in their attempt to bring in ecologically conscious customers. But
doing the bare minimum doesn’t entitle them to take advantage of consumers — or
to keep polluting.
So,
what can you do?
On
an individual level, always look past packaging and actually read labels, since
ingredients are far more indicative of a company’s relationship to the
environment than their branding. Read up about a brand before buying from it to
make sure it doesn’t have any environmental skeletons in its closet.
Whenever
possible, try to find local alternatives to products created by multinational
corporations, since these tend to be the largest polluters.
And
remember, buying better quality, more expensive products once in a while is
always better than buying and throwing out low quality products seasonally.
But
to truly abolish this harmful practice, we must acknowledge that it’s a
structural issue.
While
you can help in small ways through individual action, the biggest impact you
can have is by supporting policies like the Green New Deal. When our tax
dollars support sustainability on a massive scale, we’ll see a much bigger
impact than what we can achieve in a store aisle.
Mallika Khanna is a freelance
writer based in New Delhi, India who also writes about gender, immigrant
experiences, and South Asia. She’s an alumna of Trinity College in Hartford,
Connecticut. Distributed by OtherWords.org.