A bad case of solar flannel
13 Jul 2010
The term ‘greenwash’ refers to a practice of companies or individuals who disingenuously spin their products or actions to imply they have some kind of beneficial effect on the environment.
Personally, I think the whole ‘green’ rhetoric has become an absurd obsession. Some companies will have products that are beneficial to the environment; others will have products that don’t benefit the environment. Except that in the current age it is simply impossible for companies to suggest that they are not particularly ‘green’, hence the need for ever more insidious ‘greenwash’.
Perhaps the world could take a tip from the Norwegian authorities. Norway has a very strict set of advertising guidelines. Bente Oeverli, a senior official at the office of Norway’s Consumer Ombudsman, said in 2007: ‘Cars cannot do anything good for the environment except less damage than others.’
She added: ‘If someone says their car is more “green” or “environmentally friendly” than others then they would have to be able to document it in every aspect from production, to emissions, to energy use, to recycling. In practice that can’t be done.’
Speaking as a confirmed cyclist and public transport user, I can only applaud the inherent sanity of these statements.
However, sometimes things get even worse than ‘greenwash’. BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward, still battling with the PR and ecological nightmare of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has been criticised by Jason Ankers of West Kent Greenpeace for apparently giving the green light for a set of solar panels to be installed at his home in Kent, UK. Ankers said: ’[Tony Hayward] needs to face up to his huge global responsibilities – not home improvements.’
This isn’t ‘greenwash’; this is solar flannel.
