Cause and Effect | Unmasking deceptive climate pledges in big oil and fast fashion
Greta Thunberg recently withdrew from an event sponsored by a fossil fuel-linked firm. Does image really trump environmental responsibility?
Climate activist Greta Thunberg recently pulled out of an event that was being sponsored by a firm that "invests heavily in the fossil fuel industry".
These sponsorships, she said, were how private companies built their social credibility as they continued operating or investing in the fossil fuel industry.
Thunberg used the term greenwashing.
While not a new concept — it has been around for nearly four decades and was even added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1999 — greenwashing has piqued public interest with the emergence of Gen Z on social media.
Put simply, greenwashing is when an organisation is more focused on appearing environmentally friendly than on actually minimising its environmental impact.
The term was coined in 1986 when environmentalist Jay Westerveld in an essay criticised the "save the towel" movement in hotels at the time.
In an article in The Guardian, Westerveld recalled a note he saw at the Beachcomber Resort in Fiji, asking customers to pick up their towels.
It basically said that the oceans and reefs are an important resource, and that reusing the towels would reduce ecological damage,” he said, marvelling at the expansion in the middle of the South Pacific that the resort was undertaking at the time.
The second half of the last century was replete with such campaigns, though.
Oil company Chevron commissioned a series of television and newspaper ads — the primary medium of entertainment at the time — to convince the public of its environmental bonafides. The “People Do” campaign showed Chevron employees protecting bears, butterflies and all sorts of animals.
Another example is electrical behemoth Westinghouse's nuclear power division, which amid the anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s, brought out ads proclaiming the cleanliness and safety of nuclear power plants. One featured a photo of a nuclear power plant on the edge of a pristine lake, proclaiming that "Nuclear power plants are good neighbours. They are odourless. They are neat, clean and safe."
The plants were indeed producing electricity with far less air pollution than coal plants at the time. The application of the word safe however was arguable, considering the environmental impact of nuclear waste.
In 1989, chemical company DuPont announced its double-hulled oil tankers with ads featuring marine animals to a background of Beethoven's Ode to Joy.
The company was revealed as the single largest corporate polluter in the US just two years later.
Two, vastly more damning, reports came out last year.
Big Oil's Real Agenda on Climate Change 2022, by InfluenceMap (a London-based think tank) in September last year, found that BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies spent an estimated $750 million in 2021 to promote a climate-friendly image. At the same time, the five companies were on track to increase oil production by 2026.
BP, in fact, has since announced a scaling back of its climate ambitions and retaining fossil fuel assets for longer than previously expected. The London-based firm clocked in a $27.7 bn profit in 2022.
Together, these companies spent only about a tenth of their investments on pursuits they considered “low-carbon”.
An earlier report, in February 2022, found a sharp rise in mentions of "climate", "low-carbon" and "transition" in annual reports of fossil fuel companies, especially Shell and BP, and increasing pledges of action in strategies.
The actions, however, were hardly enough.
“Big Oil” companies — Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor, Eni and Repsol — have continued to fuel the climate crisis, Greenpeace International said in an August 2023 report.
The report, The Dirty Dozen: The Climate Greenwashing of 12 European Oil Companies, analysed the 2022 annual reports of six global fossil fuel majors and six European oil and gas companies, concluding that a minuscule 0.3% of their combined 2022 energy production came from renewable power.
The report highlighted five issues with the “ambitions” of these companies:
- Lack of investments in sustainable solutions
- Lack of clean energy production
- Lack of strategy to achieve net zero
- Lack of real effort with fossil fuel production set to continue growing until at least 2030
- Lack of honesty
Ironically, but not unsurprisingly, these reports have all come after the International Energy Agency (IEA) in May 2021 said that there can be no new fossil fuel developments if the world is to reach net zero by 2050.
The list of examples is unending.
Volkswagen admitted to cheating emissions tests, BP fitted solar panels on gas stations, and Nestlé aimed to make its packaging 100% recyclable or reusable by 2023 without any clear targets or timelines.
In 2020, Nestlé, along with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, were named the world’s top plastic polluters for the third year in a row.
The beauty industry alone produces a staggering 151 billion pieces of packaging every year, according to market research analyst Euromonitor. Most of this is plastic and hardly recyclable.
The numerous statistics and reports have not said anything that scientists and climate activists have not been shouting hoarse about already.
And, the trend has only gotten trendier.
A 2015 Nielsen poll showed that 66% of global consumers are willing to pay more for environmentally sustainable products. Among millennials, that number jumps to 73%.
Another, by McKinsey, found that Gen Z (people born between 1996 and 2010) were more likely to spend money on companies and brands that appeared ethical.
Following suit, more and more companies are changing their business models to offer sustainable products, onsite recycling, or the more commonly found, environment-friendly solutions.
Ever noticed cardboard bins near the billing counters at a Marks & Spencer accepting old clothes for recycling? Or a basket at The Body Shop for emptied containers? H&M has introduced a similar recycling option, as has Korean skincare brand Innisfree. There is also the different packaging for food orders from Zomato.
L’Oréal has pledged to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or bio-based by 2030. Unilever, Coty and Beiersdorf have pledged to make sure plastic packaging is recycled, reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025; Estée Lauder has a target of 75% of its packaging.
Kiehl’s told Vogue India in 2020 that: “Thanks to our customers, we have recycled over 11.2m products globally since 2009, and we’re committed to recycling 11m more by 2025.
While in the beauty industry, the shift has been slightly more willing, with the fashion industry, it has emerged in the form of governments questioning brands and their supposedly “conscious” collections.
Several fast fashion brands have for years used the vagueness of green terminology to appear more environmentally sustainable, and increase sales.
A lawsuit filed in New York accused H&M of creating an illusion “that old clothes are simply turned into new garments, or that clothes will not end up in a landfill” which it said was misleading. The lawsuit added that “recycling solutions either do not exist or are not commercially available at scale for the vast majority" of H&M's products. Further, it said, “It would take H&M more than a decade to recycle what it sells in a matter of days”.
On the heels of the H&M lawsuit, the UK watchdog, Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on July 29 that it would investigate Asos, Boohoo, and other fashion brands over claims about the sustainable nature of their products.
The effectiveness of this policy shift is still questionable.
While some companies are engaging in greenwashing consciously, others may just be suffering from a lack of research and a rush to bring out new products to stay relevant.
For instance, an Australian company switched to "biodegradable plastic", which did not fully degrade, but instead just broke down into smaller parts unless it was processed in a digester designed to create conditions for the biodegradation. The company, instead, needed compostable bags.
This might offer food for thought for the policymakers in Delhi who, try as hard as they may, cannot arrive at a consensus on the safe thickness of plastic bags.
This might offer food for thought for the policymakers in Delhi who, try as hard as they may, cannot arrive at a consensus on the safe thickness of plastic bags. The last notification, in December last year, fixed the minimum thickness at 120 microns.
If all this wasn’t alarming enough, half the world's plastic was produced in the last 16 years. Of this, the industry giants and the army of R&D they deploy could only manage to recycle a mere 9%, drowning the planet in about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year.
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