Pollution and Greenwashing

We have probably heard dozens of times about the risks that our society is taking with pollution: animals having to leave their natural habitats and potentially going extinct, the ozone layer shredding day by day, how we are slowly killing the entire ocean with plastic, or destroying beautiful landscapes just to make small time investments that damage our planet. Those things get repeated everyday to spread awareness, and by spreading awareness, eventually someone will start to take action, companies that understand these problems and help pollute more than they should get called “Green” companies. Green companies should give their best to decrease their Carbon footprint, replace plastics with more environment-friendly solutions, use renewable sources of energy and should acknowledge that even if they lose some profit, they are making this for the good of our planet before it gets too late.

What is Greenwashing?

Greenwashing is a term used to describe the marketing tactics used by big-name companies to advertise their new supposed “sustainable” products, but are actually conveying false impressions by often providing misleading information just to make more people buy their products.

When you buy a green product, being an electric car, or even just vegan food you get a sense of satisfaction by doing your work of investing in sustainable sources, and even if the quality of the product isn’t the best, by spending money on it the companies will try making it better while also supporting our planet. Greenwashing companies abuse this information, by often being vague about their green products, even by self proclaiming themselves as environmentally friendly even though they have no factual proof, often putting tree pictures or green color to label their polluting product as “green”. A lot of  big companies often get away with greenwashing because it’s still a rather new concept. Green companies have existed since the 70’, but they have been labelling and advertising themselves as such only since the last decade. Some of these companies are: Volkswagen, Coca Cola and Nestlè, the ladder two even resulting in being in the top 3 of most polluting companies even when they label their products as “Green”.

But what can we do about it?

Fortunately, consumers have the real power over companies, but we often don’t know it, like stated before, even just by spreading information we are helping, if more people know about this crime, they can start reevaluating their purchases, and maybe buying a product that is really friendly for the environment, and not just claiming to be one, leading to these companies losing profits and understanding that they probably need to change for good, because lying about your products and their impact on the environment just to increase your gains is a serious crime.