It’s so difficult to separate actions that are truly sustainable from actions claiming – often by people and companies with positive reputations – to be sustainable but, in fact aren’t. The term “sustainability” isn’t measurable. And the majority of the public would not know how to measure it.
And asking companies to changing from practices that have been at the core of their successful businesses for decades is asking them to take a huge risk … and one that could be fatal to their future. So, they issue statements that tell their constituents what they want to hear. At some point of course, we need to “give the devil his due.” And we have to hope it isn’t too late.
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68% of U.S. execs admit their companies are guilty of greenwashing
And two-thirds of executives globally questioned whether
their company’s sustainability efforts were genuine.
Fast Company
04-13-22
In a new survey of 1,491 executives across different industries around the world, CEOs and other C-suite leaders said that sustainability was a priority. But 58% also admitted that their companies were guilty of greenwashing; among leaders in the U.S., that figure rose to 68%. And two-thirds of executives globally questioned whether their company’s sustainability efforts were genuine.
The anonymous survey, conducted by the Harris Poll for Google Cloud with executives primarily at companies with more than 500 employees, has mixed messages: 80% of executives gave their companies an “above-average” rating for environmental sustainability. The majority of leaders both at large corporations and startups said that sustainability is a priority for them; 93% said that they’d be willing to tie their compensation to ESG (environmental, social, and governance) goals, or already do. But 65% said that while they wanted to make progress on sustainability efforts, they didn’t actually know how to do that.
Measuring progress is one challenge—only 36% of executives said that their companies had measurement tools in place to track their sustainability efforts. (Google Cloud, which builds some of those tools itself, did the survey in part to better understand what its customers need.) Only 17% of respondents said that they’re using data from measurement tools to optimize their sustainability strategies. That’s likely to change as regulations do, at least for climate-related data.
In the U.S., a proposed SEC rule would make it mandatory for companies to report climate emissions, along with their climate risk, for the first time. The U.K. already has a similar new requirement in place.
The survey results about greenwashing echo some outside analyses. The NewClimate Institute, a nonprofit, recently assessed 25 large companies with goals to reach net zero emissions, and found that they were exaggerating their progress and on track to reduce their emissions by only 40%, not 100%. (Some of the companies argue that the report’s methodology was flawed.)
A new UN panel will also study corporate net zero plans to understand how much is greenwashing, and to issue new recommendations for how to set credible net zero goals.
Some regulators are also stepping up enforcement of misleading claims. In the U.K., the number of ads banned for greenwashing tripled in the last year.
The European Commission is now considering new regulations that would ban vague environmental claims that can’t be proven, along with other misleading claims.
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While I’m devoting all my time, energy, and dollars to causing as much positive change as I can towards sustainable living, I am obliged to be sensitive to the difficulty large organizations have to accomplish any kind of change. Even a CEO can’t just wave a wand and cause the change he or she wants. However, they must change if we’re to survive. Comments from D …
“Much of the world is controlled by large corporations. And yet, consumers have much power in swaying corporations. First, your job as consumer is to research products that you buy that are claiming to be ‘green’. If, in fact, they are not green, let the company know that you are watching. And don’t buy the product. To check on a product, there are two decent sources that we know of: EWG, the Environmental Working Group; and Consumer Reports.”
If you do contact a company about a product they claim is sustainable but really isn’t, and if the response you get – if you get one at all – does not satisfy you that they’re genuinely trying to be sustainable, then perhaps use a variety of social media to make as many people as you can aware of the problem. Companies ultimately must be sensitive to their constituencies.
