Eco-friendliness and concern for climate change has grown increasingly prevalent over the past decade, especially within younger generations. Unfortunately, environmental capitalism seems to have caught up with true advocacy, and in its place intends to take lucrative advantage of well-meaning activists. These exploitative and deceptive measures have come to be known as “greenwashing.”
Greenwashing essentially involves companies and large entities claiming to take “eco-friendly” or “green” actions as a marketing strategy, whilst actually doing much less for the environment. In other words, companies are using these “sustainable” terms to sell their products and use their ethical appearance to drive sales and attract customers. Advertising regulations skip over a concise definition of what a “green” product should be, making greenwashing a fairly easy plan to get away with. And who are particularly susceptible to spending more money on eco-friendly products? Generation Z, aka, my own generation.
A specific example that I’ve personally encountered (among thousands of others I probably haven’t even noticed) was with a reusable notebook. The product was marketed as sustainable due to its ability to store notes in any cloud service through their phone app, and later could be microwaved to clear the pages for re-utilization. I consulted my uncle Stasiek, who always has the best ecological responses to my questions. He prompted me to consider some crucial details I had overlooked:
First, the material and the production process. The notebook required special pens that erased under heat, which possibly contained toxic ink that would have to come from outside the United States. The notebook itself also definitely had to go through some special industrial process that would add to its ecological footprint.
Next, I had to consider that this product didn’t work on its own. For its full use, I would need to use my phone for cloud storage, the special pens, and a microwave. This would add the ecological footprint of the other products to the footprint of the notebook on its own. My uncle also caught the fact that the product only had a lifespan of five full uses as a notebook — so, all of these contaminating factors would go into solely five uses.
Finally, from being made in China, the carbon emissions from the transportation of the product were high, as most outsourced products are.
This experience taught me to be doubtful of marketing ploys that seem sustainable. It made me realize that it was a much better option to purchase a recycled paper notebook produced locally, such as the “Decomposition Book.” For other paper options, it’s useful to pay attention to the companies’ certification: FSC certified paper replants one hectare of forest for every one hectare used for paper production. These kinds of certifications exist for different kinds of products and are useful to research. It’s also important to look into the details of the origin of the product to further research its true environmental impact, such as if maybe this “eco-friendly” product comes from a company that highly pollutes through the production of all other products. Be on the lookout and demand evidence proving that the sustainable claims these companies make are true.
Of course, it goes without saying that it shouldn’t be our duty as individuals to try and reverse climate change on our own. It is of paramount importance that we recognize that the fate of our planet weighs heavily on industrial corporations and the policies they decide to implement. Individuals living in first-world societies especially can only hope to contribute to the cause as much as their lifestyle allows. For example, the use of a laptop, although a highly contaminating product, has become an urgent need for educational and work-related reasons. This is not to say that we shouldn’t work towards an overall more ecological society and way of living, but it is indeed a change that needs to be enforced from institutional reform.
As individuals, we can only exhaust ourselves in searching and researching for a better product to an extent. Even so, I personally believe that even the smallest of changes can contribute to the larger matter at hand, and although we cannot be perfect, we should never strive for anything less than excellence. It’s time we abolish the practice of greenwashing and demand the companies that further climate change to take action. We cannot allow marketing tactics to continue to mislead. Let’s show that we can — and will — call them on their bullshit.