The climate crisis has become a topic of increasing awareness as its impact has grown. Subsequently, issues such as combating the climate crisis and sustainability have entered the agendas of large companies, attracting the attention of their competitors and then of sectors other than their own. So much so that, along with their production capacities and market shares, how “green” they are has become a parameter in which companies compete with each other. This comparison led companies to consider being “green” as a marketing method and at the end of the day, “looking green” became more valuable than “being green”. This snaking chain of events leads us to the last link in the chain, the basic principle of looking green without being green: green whitewash...

Let's start by defining greenwashing simply. We can say that it means that companies and organizations mislead their consumers or target audiences into believing that a product, service or organization they provide is environmentally friendly or sustainable.

So, can we detect when a company is greenwashing? How can we avoid it as a company?

At this point, it is useful to go back a bit to the history of greenwashing. Ironically, greenwashing is a concept that was added to the terminology long before the news of floods caused by the climate crisis, before companies found a place in the market with their sustainability goals, and even before the establishment of professional social networks where we share all this climate crisis-related information on the homepage. For the first time in 1986, environmentalist Jay Westerveld, during his vacation in Fiji, saw a hotel encouraging its guests to reuse their towels with the slogan “Reuse your towels, protect the oceans”. However, when he looks at the hotel's other activities, he realizes that, contrary to a profile that cares about nature, it has turned into a business that grows every season and becomes more and more consumption-oriented. And so, he realizes that there are economic interests behind this motivation to protect the oceans.

This event in the introduction of green whitewash into our lives actually gives us an idea about the path we should follow in distinguishing looking green from being green.

Sustainability, or being green, which we have talked a lot about above, is more than an activity, it is an issue that needs to be addressed more holistically. In other words, when sustainability efforts are considered independently from the work already carried out or the production chain, we cannot expect these “green actions” to have a serious impact on the scale of the company. Therefore, we may not see a noticeable reduction in the company's impact on the environment. Moreover, when it presents itself to the consumer as a “sustainable company”, this is nothing more than an attempt to mask the situation that is already there.

The basis of the holistic approach we are trying to establish is the recognition that sustainability is a management strategy. Rather than seeing the environment and people as two separate and independent concepts, seeing them as a whole can be taken as the main point of this strategy.

In addition to this holistic approach, the most critical point of a greenwash-free marketing is transparency. Sharing your data with the consumer in a transparent and reliable manner will strengthen your position in the eyes of the consumer in terms of brand value, while enabling companies to follow their own developments more honestly and realistically.

In summary, even though the saying “Fake it, till you make it”, which we hear much more often with the personal development fad of the 2000s, is good for a generation's relationship with itself, let's not resort to this method in our relationship with nature. So instead of looking green until we are green, let's continue on our way with the awareness that we will only look green when we are really green.

Aslınur Gayretli / 30.11.2022