Greenwashing is a word used to describe the deceptive use of green marketing in order to promote businesses or products as environmentally friendly. It is argued that some companies spend more time on advertising how 'green' they are, rather than spending money on green practices. This is more common than you may think.
Greenwashing examples:
- In 2009, European McDonald's changed their logo colours from yellow and red to yellow and green.
- Grocery chains charging money for plastic bags to 'save the environment'.
- Environmentally friendly images (lakes, rolling hills, beaches) on food and drinks that have made no attempt to lessen their environmental impact.
- Solar panels on buildings that they either don't use or have not attempted to lessen their energy consumption in any way.
This last point brings about the idea of 'Eco-bling'. This term can be described as the ineffective use of green technology - equipment that has been added onto an existing poorly-designed building that does little to reduce the building's use of natural resources.
A new Sainsbury supermarket concept that is 'sustainable and eco-friendly' is a primary example of eco-bling. The supermarket claims that its new kinetic energy system captures energy from cars as they enter the carpark and uses this energy to generate power. Scientists have tested the concept of these 'kinetic road plates' and concluded that the energy extracted from the car comes to 0.002 kilowatt-hours. However, the energy used by the car on its trip to the supermarket would be at least 8 kilowatt-hours. The savings from parking at the 'green carpark' amount to one four-thousandth of the energy used by the trip to the supermarket (less than 1% of an energy saving).
Policies need to be put in place to ensure that green or sustainable practices are making a decent enough energy saving to be able to promote their practices as 'green' as it cannot be determined by the general public through the excessive amount of products and businesses that are greenwashing or eco-bling-ing.
In parts of the UK, the Merton Rule has been established. This requires any residential development of more than 10 units, or any commercial building over 1000 square meters to reduce its carbon emissions by a certain percentage through the use of on-site renewables. If rules like this one were established by the Auckland Council, a low carbon future would be achieved.
http://www.wordspy.com/words/eco-bling.asp
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