Back when we were in school, we all loved getting out of class to attend an “assembly.” These presentations and performances were always a welcome respite from the monotony of the day-to-day schedule. Some were good, some bad, others just plain boring. But for me and my friends, there’s one that we experienced in sixth grade that stands out among all of them – and we still remember it like it was yesterday.

The presentation was called “Caveat Emptor.” For those unfamiliar with the Latin phrase, Caveat Emptor translates to “Let the buyer beware.” Entering out “tween” years, at the time we were just starting our journey as consumers. It was the mid 1980s, image was everything, and advertisements targeting our demographic were everywhere. Wherever our eyeballs went, we were inundated with branding. This made the Caveat Emptor presentation so compelling.

In essence, Caveat Emptor urged our young minds to see through the logos, taglines and promises of society’s most popular brands. It went so far as to reveal subconscious messages found in ads on both print and broadcast media. We were implored to not fall for a variety of traps when it comes to how we should spend our (parents’) hard-earned money.

The curtain was suddenly pulled back, and the secrets behind the world of big money marketing were exposed. We now had some knowledge, and of course knowledge is power. The lessons I learned in that presentation are as applicable as ever. For evidence, look no further than some of the sustainability claims on packaging.

This brings to mind the term “Greenwashing,” which, according to Wikipedia, is a form of advertising or marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization’s products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly. The definition continues, “Many corporations use greenwashing to improve public perception of their brands. Complex corporate structures can further obscure the big picture. Without external monitoring and verification, greenwashing strategies amount to corporate posturing and deception. When a company decides to behave responsibly and adopts a sustainable development vision, it may have to change its corporate culture deeply…It is not enough to integrate sustainable development into communication to persuade the consumer to buy.”

BRANDS EXPOSED

Changing Markets Foundation, an organization formed to accelerate and scale up solutions to sustainability challenges, recently launched Greenwash.com, a website that aims to expose those guilty of greenwashing.

“Greenwashing tricks us into believing change is happening, when in reality it’s not,” the foundation states. “The number of products labeled ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ has increased exponentially in recent years, with many household brands guilty of greenwashing. Yet as businesses claim progress toward sustainability, emissions continue to rise, extraction increases and overproduction spirals. Greenwashing lulls us into a false sense of security – a smokescreen that conceals the continued exploitation of the planet and allows those responsible to get away with it.”

Pretty strong words from Changing Markets Foundation, which is fitting, as they’ve got in their crosshairs some pretty strong brands. IKEA, Coca-Cola, Unilever and Kim Kardashian’s clothing company SKIMS, as well as retailers such as Tesco and Lidl, are among those exposed.

According to Changing Markets Foundation, “Coca-Cola has spent millions in advertising, telling consumers that some of its bottles are made out of 25% marine plastic while failing to mention that it is the world’s biggest plastic polluter. Consumers are being encouraged to buy Procter & Gamble’s Head and Shoulders shampoo because it is made out of  ‘beach plastic,’ but the bottle is dyed blue, meaning it cannot be recycled further.”

Unilever has replaced recyclable PET bottles of washing liquid with pouches as part of its eco-refill push. But unlike PET bottles, the foundation says, the pouches are unrecyclable and only contain two refills. Changing Markets found that Tesco is touting new and improved ‘recyclable’ flexible plastic packaging on its products but only if consumers bring it back to larger stores – and even then it is unlikely to be recycled, the foundation says.

Changing Markets recently launched a report titled, “Under wraps? What Europe’s supermarkets aren’t telling us about plastic.”  The report highlights UK supermarkets’ soft plastic take-back programs as a false solution, with waste often being exported to countries with much less capacity to deal with plastic pollution. The report also highlights a lack of systemic solutions to the plastic crisis by over 70 supermarkets analyzed, including Tesco.

Instead of changing its products, Changing Markets says, following bans on single-use cutlery in the EU’s Single Use Plastics Directive, Spain’s biggest supermarket Mercadona rebranded its plastic cutlery as “reusable” with “green” images on the packaging.

Kim Kardashian’s shapewear and clothing brand SKIMS was found guilty of greenwashing within its compostable underwear packaging. The package features the bold claim “I AM NOT PLASTIC” despite the small print stating it is indeed LDPE (Low-Density Polyethylene).

IKEA is another company found guilty by Changing Markets. A participating company of NextWave, which claims to be “turning off the tap on plastic pollution by creating the first global network of ocean-bound plastics supply chains,” IKEA launched its Musselblomma range of  “sustainable textiles” made from plastic partly collected in the Mediterranean Sea. However, the foundation states, producing and purchasing these products does nothing to prevent this plastic from entering the ocean in the first place, and also removes PET bottles from the circular loop.

These examples show that brands are presenting materials and selling products as better for the environment when they are either difficult to recycle, not recyclable at all or using a small fraction of “ocean-bound” plastic that they collected through various clean-ups.

Changing Markets has also called out Terracycle, an organization that partners with companies on recycling initiatives. The foundation points out how the Terracycle logo is widely used across a variety of unrecyclable plastic products to give the impression that they are greener than they actually are, the foundation reports, adding, “The company claims that you can recycle practically all types of packaging with Terracycle, yet a recent BBC Panorama investigation exposed that there are many practical barriers to their products being recycled. Even then, most will be downcycled into items like park benches, which cannot be recycled further.”

Greenwash.com has already had an impact. After previously being exposed by Changing Markets for greenwashing, H&M was found to have removed their “Conscious” label from clothes that had unsubstantiated green claims. 

George Harding-Rolls, campaign manager at Changing Markets Foundations, comments, “Our latest investigation exposes a litany of misleading and mendacious claims from household names consumers should be able to trust. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and it is of crucial importance that regulators take this issue seriously.

“The industry is happy to gloat its green credentials with little substance on the one hand, while continuing to perpetuate the plastic crisis on the other. We are calling out greenwashing so the world can see that voluntary action has led to a market saturated with false claims. We must embrace systemic solutions such as absolute reductions in plastic packaging and mandatory deposit return systems.”

Sian Sutherland, A Plastic Planet co-founder, says, “Plastic is now a very powerful and emotional word; we all feel the plastic guilt when we fill our shopping baskets. Brands have been exploiting this over recent years, using age-old marketing techniques that are totally misleading or downright fake, pretending that the problem is being fixed when actually it is getting worse with plastic production set to treble by 2040.

“Greenwash.com exposes these false green claims for what they are – daylight robbery of the consumer’s right and ability to judge the product. It shines a light on how desperate brands and retailers are to maintain business as usual while they mislead consumers into thinking they are making ethical choices.  We need to turn off the plastic tap once and for all before the plastic waste crisis spirals beyond control, but in order to achieve this, we first must pressure global brands into fessing up to their plastic addiction. Shoppers must no longer be kept in the dark about the reality of plastic in their purchases.”