Common Greenwashing Terms & Examples

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Learn about new and emerging greenwashing tactics, including strategies to help you avoid making misleading environmental claims for your organization.

In our previous blog post on greenwashing, we acknowledged the rising societal awareness around environmental issues and the surge in corporate environmental commitments. The landscape of greenwashing, full of misleading tactics but also, in some cases, well-intentioned efforts that went awry or were inaccurate, has grown increasingly complex since then. More and more companies are making claims, some of which are not always accurate, and while calling something greenwashing, or any of the new terms introduced here-in, can sometimes be used as part of a well-reasoned argument, it’s increasingly used as an easy catch-all term to suggest nefarious communications without the need to dig deeper. Simply labeling something as greenwashing in this way can be dismissive, and it gives people a pass to not talk about the problems or the challenges.

This blog post seeks to build upon our prior post by introducing new terms that have emerged as subsets of greenwashing. Our objective is to help you gain an understanding of these deceptive strategies and to arm you with the knowledge and tools needed to avoid these pitfalls for your organization. Disclosing your actions with traceability and transparency is important, and fear of accusations of greenwashing should not hinder businesses from stating their progress.

New and Emerging Greenwashing Tactics

Let’s start by unmasking some of the newer greenwashing terms and tactics that have emerged:

• Greenwashing (or green washing): Misleading promotion of products or policies as environmentally friendly when in reality, they are not—often exaggerating the benefits while hiding the true or non-existent environmental impact.
• Greenhushing (or green hushing): This tactic refers to a deliberate silence about sustainable goals to avoid the accusation of greenwashing, potentially obscuring valid sustainability efforts and misleading investors.
• Greenshifting (or green shifting): This involves transferring responsibility to consumers in a subtle blame game. By highlighting consumer choices rather than their corporate sustainability strategies, businesses can divert attention from their own environmental responsibilities.
• Greencrowding (or green crowding): Here, a company aligns itself with the least ambitious sustainability pace in a group, showing a lack of push for significant advancements and stifling innovation.
• Greenlighting (or green lighting): This involves spotlighting a particularly environmentally friendly aspect of a company’s operations to divert attention from less sustainable practices elsewhere in the company.
• Greenlabelling (or green labelling): Greenlabelling involves the deceptive use of eco-labels to falsely claim a product or service is more sustainable than it actually is, misleading consumers.
• Greenrinsing (or green rinsing): This involves businesses frequently changing ESG targets without genuine accomplishment, thereby eroding trust and making it hard for stakeholders to track their progress.
• Carbonwashing: Misleading claims that overstate the carbon neutrality or reductions achieved by a company.

How to Avoid Misleading Environmental Claims

Greenwashing is a complex concept, but it can be avoided with the right strategies. To help businesses communicate their authentic environmental efforts, below is a table that outlines key greenwashing terms, gives practical examples, and explains how the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Green Guides, which are currently under review, and CarbonBetter can be used to counter each greenwashing tactic.

Consider this table as a starting point to help guide you through the often-confusing greenwashing landscape:

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By referencing this table as a starting point, businesses can strengthen their defense against greenwashing and ensure their environmental claims are credible and verifiable. The end goal is simple yet significant—every green claim should be accurate and authentic and should have data to back it up.

Regulatory Landscape: Responding to Greenwashing

With a growing emphasis on corporate environmental responsibility, the regulatory landscape is quickly shifting to match. The European Union (EU) has recently proposed a new law "to stop companies from making misleading claims about environmental merits of their products and services." This directive would standardize green claims, aiming to eradicate misleading or false assertions about the environmental benefits of products and services. The proposed law would ensure that consumers receive reliable, verifiable, and comparable information, aiding them in making environmentally conscious decisions.

This new law, which aligns with the principles of the United States (US) Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Green Guides, underscores the increasing importance of transparency and accuracy in making environmental claims. As these changes unfold, it's clear that businesses will need to adjust their sustainability communications strategies, moving away from unsupported or vague claims and towards accurate, measurable, and verifiable disclosures of their environmental impact and sustainability initiatives. That's where we can help.

Conclusion

Trying to make accurate and honest claims about the environmental impacts of your business can be challenging to get right. However, by maintaining data accuracy—and by emphasizing honesty, transparency, and traceability—you can get your organization started in the right direction today. If you need help accurately quantifying your environmental impacts, tracking your progress, and telling your organization’s story, we can help! Contact us to get started.