Greenwashed, Greenwished, and Greenhushed: The Truth Behind Corporate Sustainability Claims

Sustainability as a term and concept began to gain popularity after the release of the 1987 Brundtland Report. However, the integration of sustainability into business took much longer to adopt, with the term only coming to the forefront in the last decade. On the one hand, this can be seen as a victory, whereby many new initiatives and technologies developed by companies are first assessed for sustainability, before practicality and other features. However, as sustainability begins to clash with commercial viability and profit margins, we have begun to see companies engaging in green-washing, -wishing, -hushing and -rinsing. Worse still, at a governmental level, we are starting to see climate change being downplayed and even ignored. In this article, we define each of the terms mentioned above, as well as providing examples of where these may occur, and highlight the issues they bring. 

 

Greenwashing

This is perhaps the term most people are familiar with when discussing the subversion of sustainability goals. This practice involves conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company’s products are environmentally sound. Companies can make unsubstantiated claims about their products or initiatives to gain public support or even hide trade-offs. An example of this would be a company advertising that their products are “made with recycled plastics”, even if there is only 5-10% recycled plastic by weight. A major symptom of greenwashing is a lack of transparency as to a product’s lifecycle or a company’s overall environmental impact. 

 

Greenwishing

Greenwishing involves making optimistic or aspirational sustainability claims without a realistic plan or evidence to back them up. This is often done by companies that genuinely believe in sustainability, but that have not taken the time to plan for how they might reach their goals. An example of greenwishing is the trend in the corporate world of setting Net Zero targets. These targets for 2030, 2035, etc often do not have clear strategies or milestones and lack the company-wide buy-in required to make them achievable. For this reason, many large multinationals have been quietly retracting their pledges, which undermines their sustainability strategy as a whole. It is essential that a business understands their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and future scale-up in order to formulate realistic sustainability goals, to avoid greenwishing. 

 

Greenhushing

Greenhushing falls at the other end of the spectrum to greenwishing, whereby a company will downplay or avoid publicising sustainability initiatives entirely. This has evolved as companies fear the public scrutiny of their business practices, and do not want to be accused of greenwashing or greenwishing. Greenhushing is not always intentional with smaller companies sometimes struggling to find time or the funds to investigate what sustainability goals they could set. On the other hand, some large multinationals such as luxury fashion and jewellery brands have been explicit in their desire to remain discrete as to their ESG goals. This has been attributed to backlash from critics scrutinising their supply chains and labour practices. 

 

Greenrinsing

Greenrinsing is the practice of frequently changing or softening sustainability targets to give the illusion of progress to consumers. This term is closely linked to greenwishing and indeed, the earlier example of changing net zero target dates often is an example of greenrinsing. The practice of greenrinsing allows companies to appear responsive to environmental concerns while avoiding actual commitment. Key examples of greenrinsing include fossil fuel companies consistently shifting climate targets as well as FMCG companies vowing to eliminate the use of plastics. In both cases, deadlines tend to be extended indefinitely as to when these goals will be achieved, and in some cases, definitions such as “eliminated” are warped to fit the companies’ needs. That said, greenrinsing can also arise when companies have planned for sustainable technologies to be adopted which have not materialised. This can be due to issues including failure to reach cost parity for sustainable materials, regulatory hurdles to the use of new technologies/materials, or lack of internal resources to find, develop and test sustainable solutions. 

 

Conclusion

Overall, this article may leave you with a sense that consumers are being manipulated by companies, whereby sustainability terminology has been repurposed to increase sales. In actual fact, many companies engage in green-washing, -wishing, -hushing and -rinsing purely out of ignorance or a lack of foresight. However, going forward, companies will have to prioritise transparency, set realistic goals, and engage stakeholders in order to verifiably prove that their sustainability goals and initiatives can be achieved, and are therefore credible. As sustainability becomes an ever more important issue for consumers, they will scrutinise claims further, allowing them to ignore products and companies with vague terminology and buzzwords. Furthermore, governments will continue to crack down on misrepresentation and enforce standards for consistent reporting and accountability.  

At Strategic Allies Ltd, we are keen to help our clients formulate and implement their sustainability goals, highlighted by the fact that 70% of recent projects undertaken have had a sustainability focus. We are aware that our clients need to balance sustainability goals with company performance and we can help them landscape possible solutions and scout specific technologies. Whether companies are seeking to better understand how they can set sustainable targets more effectively, carry out a voice of customer search to better understand consumers, or design a bespoke workshop to discuss sustainability with senior stakeholders, Strategic Allies Ltd will be here to guide our clients towards maximum impact.