It seems like Fun With Advertising Week at TreeHugger; first with Clean Coal Carolers, and now with the fantasy behind clean coal, carbon capture and storage. (CCS). Shell is running this ad in the New Yorker, noting that "Perfecting CCS won't be easy, but we believe it is needed to tackle CO2 emissions." But what are they really saying in that headline? That it is impossible. ...
The fun never stops with the humorists at the Competitive Enterprise Institute; one never knows what cause they will satirize next. Like the Onion, you often have to look twice to tell if they are serious or not. We laughed till we cried at their CO2: we call it Life skits of a couple of years ago; cracked up at their defence of the top-loading washing machine; now they are having their way with a hilarious parody campaign to, get this, defend bottled water. ...
They are just so cute, those kids on the cement promotion site. The concrete manufacturers advertise themselves as green, and whenever we go to the trade shows, all the insulated form manufacturers are calling themselves "green"- there was a whole row of them at Greenbuild. My usual complaints are the amount of Carbon Dioxide generated in its manufacture or the damage done by aggregate extraction; now we have a new one: cement kilns are among the worst emitters of mercury on the continent.
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Smith & Wesson were unavailable to talk about gun control, so instead the New York Times got Michael Critelli, Executive Chairman of Pitney Bowes, to defend junk mail against attempts by Leonardo, Oprah and others who consider junk mail an environmental problem and are supporting legislation to have a do-not-mail list, similar to the do-not-call list.
Q. What is the argument that Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio are making?...
Somewhere in Washington, perhaps in a gracious vinyl-clad manse like the one above, resides the Vinyl Siding Institute, bravely lobbying away to promote the wonders of its miracle product. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it. Someone has to let the world know that vinyl siding is really green. Like Wonderbread for the housing industry, it builds green houses in 12 different ways: ...
It is a stunning website with poetic copy- "Underlying the concept of WASARA is the legacy of the Japanese aesthetic and value sense. Japan has a tradition of good manufacturing backed by excellent skills and techniques, one of the most refined food cultures in the world, and a spirit of hospitality and courtesy. These are essential for days of spiritual fulfillment." -for a disposable paper plate....
“A lot of people look at mountain top removal as a negative, but I see it as a positive,” said Mongiardo. “We need to stop apologizing for coal. We don’t want to defend mountain top removal, but I want us to promote mountain top removal, because we need flat land. We can not have economic expansion without places to do things and part of mountain top removal is for places like hospitals, airports and different type of merchants." ::Appalachian News-Express via ::Grist
We have previously noted the six sins of greenwashing; Joel Bittle over at Green Building Elements does a terrific job in coming up with the seven sins of greenwashing in the building business. Most are relevant to designers working with LEED, but many are useful to anyone looking at materials for home or office. Read the original post for greater detail, here is a summary:
That's "Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy", saying that coal is "now clean and green with new technologies." Their mission: "to be a unified voice in support of Pennsylvania coal, the families and businesses whose livelihoods depend upon it and the importance of a healthy coal industry to our regional, state and national economies."
Jonasrisen at the always interesting Greenline does a wonderful job of collecting the most obvious and awful greenwashing ads in the architectural press, starting with the most egregious of them all, the hippie ad for LG Eden countertops. He writes:
We didn't think it was possible for Corporate America to co-op and monetize Earth Day, but then again, previous generations probably thought the same about Christmas. Or, in the words of an Advertising Age op-ed: "It's nearly Earth Day: Time to consume more to save the planet. "
Sometimes we cannot even tell if they know they are greenwashing, or if they are doing it with tongue held firmly in cheek. Like this: Coke is introducing a line of shirts made out of recycled Coke bottles. Their VP of marketing says with a straight face “These fun t-shirts merge trend with consciousness, reminding shoppers that small steps – like recycling a few bottles – can go a long way towards helping to preserve our environment. If the 200 million Wal-Mart shoppers in the U.S. purchase these shirts, they will help us reuse and divert more than 700 million bottles from the waste stream.”
How do you spot greenwashing? We had a few suggestions over at Planet Green, but Keith at Unsuitablog makes a few more:
-Be suspicious of all environmental claims. Don’t trust anything unless you have verified them yourself.
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We do spend a lot of space trashing bottled water here at TreeHugger; Fiji Water is fighting back with a green campaign where they are reducing their carbon footprint, saving the Fijian rainforest, reducing packaging and using more fuel efficient trucks to deliver the water to the port in Fiji.
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