The greenwash effect

Everyone claims to have gone green all of a sudden, but is this commitment real or only skin-deep?

EARLIER THIS month, the head of the National Roads Authority told an Oireachtas committee that building new roads was actually good for the environment. Fred Barry argued that motorists produce lower carbon emissions when sailing down an empty highway compared to the stop-start of travel in congested traffic. There's a logic of sorts at work there, but you couldn't help feeling that the world might be a better place if the motorist just took the bus.

It's the same story with Volvo, who currently tell us in an advertising campaign that we can "save the world" (and a few bob) by investing in their new flexifuel range of cars, which run on a mix of 85 per cent ethanol and 15 per petrol. "Doing your bit for the environment couldn't be more painless," we're assured, in case we are worried there might be some effort involved. Yet it turns out these cars can run on petrol only, so purchasers need never buy ethanol if they choose not to.

Business everywhere is churning out green messages these days, but the question is whether its commitment is real or only skin-deep. Are companies really interested in promoting a new green-inspired business paradigm or are they just addressing a niche? Are they driven by a new philosophy or the lure of easy profit from guilt-ridden consumers? For hard-core environmentalists (and yes, there are still a few around), much of what passes for eco-commitment is merely "greenwash", whitewash with an environmental tinge.

Even widely praised innovations have come under the cosh. Toyota, for example, has won plaudits for its fuel-saving Prius model, which has a hybrid petrol-electric engine. Yet as environmentalist George Monbiot has pointed out, the Prius accounts for only a fraction of the company's sales and its relative success hasn't dented the sales of other, gas-guzzling models: "A company that was a 'climate change dynamo' wouldn't be creating over a million SUVs a year and building factories to make even more, let alone using improvements in efficiency to make even bigger SUVs instead of reducing consumption."

Across the car sector, the rate of innovation has been impressive and, pound for pound, today's cars are far more fuel-efficient than those of earlier eras. The trouble is that they are also bigger, because most of the improvements in efficiency have been used to build more powerful models with the same level of emissions.

Big companies often suffer from a trust deficit with the public because of the nature of their business or previous blots on their copybook. One way of making up ground is to have your products certified as being environmentally sustainable or eco-friendly.

"We are seeing a big increase in the number of companies asking to use our certifying mark," says Joke Aerts, European co-ordinator for the Rainforest Alliance, an organisation that works to "conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behaviour".

"Either the companies are being very forward-thinking, or consumers are putting them under pressure," says Aerts.

Daphne Hosford, a marketing manager for Kraft, says the reason it is selling Kenco coffee certified by the Rainforest Alliance is because "we want to be here selling coffee in 25 years' time. If nothing is done to check deforestation and other environmental problems, we won't have any coffee to sell in the future."

Though less well-known in Ireland than the Fair Trade mark, Rainforest Alliance certification is growing rapidly. For critics, it's a form of "Fair Trade lite" because there is no guaranteed premium for the producer in the developing world. Aerts says the organisation prefers to work within the rules of the free market: "Besides, it's not just about price, it's also about your input costs, the quality of your product and employee satisfaction."

Some of Rainforest Alliance's partners, which include multinationals such as McDonalds, Chiquita and Unilever, seem unlikely champions of the environment. The organisation also allows coffee companies to carry its symbol when as little as 30 per cent of the beans in the packet are environmentally certified.

Tony Lowes of Friends of the Irish Environment takes an altogether more critical view of the certification process from his experience of monitoring timber production. "These certification systems are a nightmare for consumers. It's very hard to get basic information and when you do, you find it has been used in the most unsatisfactory ways." The green movement needs some form of eco-labelling, he believes, but many of the existing schemes confer credentials on products that are undeserved.

He says they make it impossible for bodies such as FIE to object, as the labels enjoy a high level of consumer trust.

Much of the timber sold in Ireland is marketed as being sustainably produced without justification, according to Lowes: "The short rotation of alien conifers, with large-scale flow of phosphates into rivers and lakes, that's not sustainable. Sustainably produced timber can't be delivered in the quantities required by commercial producers."

Of course, why invest millions in promoting your eco-friendly image when you can buy in or take over someone else's untarnished image? This is the tack increasingly taken by big business in recent years. So Unilever has swallowed Ben and Jerry's and its hippy philosophy undigested, and L'Oréal has taken over the Body Shop. Cadbury Schweppes has bought Green & Blacks organic chocolate and last month Clorox, a bleach manufacturer, picked up Burt's Bees, a quirky manufacturer of lip balm, soaps and shampoos.

Last year, Tesco teamed up with anti-war dress designer Katharine Hamnett to produce a range of fair trade and organic clothing. This marriage appeared to end unhappily, however, with Hamnett's idealistic hopes of bringing ethical produce to the mass market being quickly shattered. "I've come to the conclusion that [ Tesco] simply wants to remain ethical, rather than make a full commitment to the range," she complained. However, business being business - even green business - the contract remained in place.