New site tracking greenwashing
I don't know if greenwash was invented by US corporations, but there does seem to be a lot more of it there than in the rest of the world. So it's good news that Greenpeace USA has launched stopgreenwash.org to track the filthy stuff.
Greenwash is about misleading people rather than changing products and business practices to be better for the environment. It's also one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. Check out StopGreenwash's straightforward criteria. And if you spot something you thing might be greenwash, you can report it here.
Comments
Check out what RAN has been up to on this subject:
http://understory.ran.org/tag/greenwash-of-the-week/
Posted by: Luke | April 26, 2008 9:16 AM
As far as I can recall, the term "greenwash" was first used by environmentalists in the early nineties. It was not invented by US corporations, rather it was a reaction against the way corporations were describing themselves. I first remember it in the context of the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
In 1999, "greenwash" was included in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, defined there as: ‘Disinformation disseminated by an organisation so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.’
Posted by: Simon Carroll | April 28, 2008 10:48 AM