April 24, 2019
Page 13
O PINION
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‘Eco-friendly’ Products that Actually Pollute
This Earth
Day, beware of
greenwashing
M alliKa K hanna
This Earth Day,
I’d like to warn you
about
“greenwash-
ing.” That’s the prac-
tice of corporations
branding their prod-
ucts “eco-friendly,”
even when they actually pollute,
to deceive environmentally con-
cerned customers.
Even if you’ve heard noth-
ing about greenwashing, you’ve
probably read about the Volkswa-
gen emissions scandal, “Diesel-
gate.”
A few years ago, the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency
found that many Volkswagen
cars being sold in America had
been outfitted with software that
enabled their diesel engines to
detect when they were being test-
ed. This allowed the engines to
improve emissions performance
under controlled laboratory con-
ditions.
But out on the road, the en-
gines were emitting 40 times
above the nitrogen oxide pollut-
by
ant levels allowed in the United
States. The software was simply
covering that up.
Volkswagen apologized for
the scandal and recalled its cars.
But for customers who bought
from the company think-
ing they were having a
positive impact on the
environment, the damage
was already done. Volk-
swagen had successfully
duped them — while also
doing enormous environ-
mental destruction.
Unfortunately, Volkswagen
is nowhere close to alone. Gre-
enwashing has a deep history
dating back to the start of the
modern environmental move-
ment in the 1960s. Since then,
no industry has been immune to
greenwashing.
In 2019, you can find this un-
ethical business practice flour-
ishing in the fashion, electronics,
fuel, food and agriculture, and
plastics industries (among oth-
ers).
Take hugely popular fash-
ion brand H&M’s Sustainable
Fashion line. On the face of it,
H&M’s commitment to creating
a sustainable fast fashion busi-
ness model is commendable. The
brand has “pledged to become
“100 percent climate positive” by
2040 by using renewable energy
and sustainable materials.
The problem is that using this
language of environmental con-
cern numbs H&M’s customers to
the utter unsustainability of fast
fashion as a concept.
For all of H&M’s recycling
endeavors, it’s still producing far
more clothing than can be used,
most of which ends up in landfills
after losing its appeal within a
season or two. By all metrics, fast
fashion is one of the most pollut-
ing industries globally.
As a consequence, even if
H&M were to fulfill all its prom-
ises by 2040, it would still be
doing more harm than good by
encouraging consumers to buy
and discard low quality products
seasonally, contributing to a nev-
er-ending cycle of waste creation.
On the surface, many brands
actually do implement policies
that are better for the environ-
ment in their attempt to bring in
ecologically conscious custom-
ers. But doing the bare minimum
doesn’t entitle them to take ad-
vantage of consumers — or to
keep polluting.
So, what can you do?
On an individual level, always
look past packaging and actually
read labels, since ingredients are
far more indicative of a compa-
ny’s relationship to the environ-
ment than their branding. Read
up about a brand before buying
from it to make sure it doesn’t
have any environmental skele-
tons in its closet.
Whenever possible, try to find
local alternatives to products cre-
ated by multinational corpora-
tions, since these tend to be the
largest polluters.
And remember, buying better
quality, more expensive products
once in a while is always better
than buying and throwing out low
quality products seasonally.
But to truly abolish this harm-
ful practice, we must acknowl-
edge that it’s a structural issue.
While you can help in small
ways through individual action,
the biggest impact you can have
is by supporting policies like the
Green New Deal. When our tax
dollars support sustainability on
a massive scale, we’ll see a much
bigger impact than what we can
achieve in a store aisle.
Mallika Khanna is a freelance
writer based in New Delhi,
India who also writes about
gender, immigrant experiences,
and South Asia. Distributed by
otherwords.org.
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