Greenwashing in the age of social media

The term whitewashing has historically been used to describe the act of covering one’s crimes, like the use of whitewash paint to cover graffiti or other blemishes. Greenwashing is the act of outwardly promoting sustainable ideas to draw attention away from the waste produced or lack of benefits. As people become more aware of the potential external costs of buying something like a bottle of water, their tastes and preferences may shift away from their normal purchases. To get ahead of this change, many companies have adapted greenwashing tactics which carefully sidestep federal regulations regarding false advertising and work to provide a counter argument for the part of your brain telling you it isn’t worth the potential costs. You don’t have to feel bad about buying a bottle of Fiji water since Every drop is green given that they donate to protect Fijian rainforests. That has to offset any costs incurred in the production of the bottle and extraction of the water, right?

The idea of selling moral values rather than the product itself is nothing new but with the rise of social media, they have had to change their approach. In traditional media, greenwashed messages would be presented by themselves as fact however now if a company makes a statement on a platform like social media, they invite response. An example of the failed use of a self-serving message as an ad campaign would be McDonald’s “#McDStories” which encouraged users to post about their favorite experience at one of the franchise’s establishments. The responses they received were stories of food poisoning and poor labor conditions. Outreach of this type attempts to gain legitimacy with consumers by conforming to social norms. However as those social norms become more sustainable, so does the corporate outreach. To gain and maintain “environmental legitimacy” many companies have begun separating their public activities from their essential and internal activities. This typically entails a lack of data collection on byproducts like pollution produced in foreign countries to prevent accusations of negligence by providing a defense in the form of feigned ignorance.

Credence goods are products with properties that can’t be known by the consumer simply by using it. Properties like whether the people who made it were adequately compensated or whether it was made with recycled materials can’t be independently verified by the consumer. It’s difficult for a consumer to make an informed decision when companies purposefully leave out data about their production methods and individuals don’t have the means of determining all the costs. The above example is a television advertisement for a Colombian oil company that claims it produces “clean” barrels of oil through vague imagery related to nature but no visualization of the oil extraction process. This gets to the core of the greenwashing issue which is that it is a problem of access to information. If we weren’t so reliant on consumer watchdog groups to do follow up research on corporate sustainability claims, usually well after the claims have had their intended effect, then we might be in a position to make wiser decisions with a better idea of the real costs versus the advertised benefits. Perhaps it will be changes to government policy or maybe the vocal minority which will force companies to reveal the whole picture.