What is “greenwashing”?

Busting the babble

Greenwashing is a bit of a complex term – it can be defined and interpreted in many different ways, and it can be quite a subjective thing – some can have quite a high threshold that companies need to shoot over to not be deemed “greenwashed”.

You’ll hear lots of companies talking about “doing their part” for the planet, and cleaning up their practices to be more sustainable.

The problem is, not all these companies are doing the hard work, and are instead hanging their hat on doing actions that seem to be doing good but in reality, have a very minimal impact if any.

The dictionary definition

The term “greenwash” is defined as “to make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is” by the Cambridge Dictionary.

Let’s put it into context

Think of it this way: there is a wide range of eco-conscious folk out there, each of them somewhere on the spectrum. You’ve got the hardcore guru’s, the tree huggers, the half and half’s, the small step every year people – I could go on, but you get the idea.

Now apply this to companies and businesses. A company greenwashing their actions, products and services are essentially buddying up to the tree-huggers, without actually doing the hard work to be sustainable. They use it as a marketing ploy and are either doing nothing, very little or not enough in regards to putting sustainability high on their agenda.

It’s misleading

The most common factor between all greenwashing is that it’s not either furthering sustainable design – like investing in more ethical and renewable materials – or driving forward a more circular economy. This misleads shoppers into thinking they’re choosing more sustainable alternatives when in fact, it’s just a misdirection from their non-sustainable practices that (shock horror) are not changing. And the planet still loses.

Enter stage left: SaveMoneyCutCarbon

Shameless plug, but we’ve got to be honest. This is exactly why at SaveMoneyCutCarbon, we’re passionate about sustainability and are so focused on educating our customers and audience on it; giving you all the tools to learn how to be sustainable for yourself. We provide easy solutions to carbon-costly problems, working hard to test all our products to sure they deliver the best possible quality and savings for your pocket and the planet.

Being sustainable can be really hard – but with us in your corner, we can make it that much easier, so you can have confidence your actions are making a real, tangible difference no matter how small.