Abstract
‘Greenwash’ is a potential backlash of sustainability. It ranges from outright lying to spinning sympathy out of ordinary compliance.
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Notes
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Gresham’s Law, an economic axiom, says that bad money drives out good money.
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In the 1990s the author was involved in establishing EU Ecolabels for hairsprays. Some activists argued that hairsprays were unnecessary products, thus fundamentally ineligible for ecolabels. Unnecessary? Surely hairsprays’ main users, middle-aged and elderly women, would disagree, but they do not have a significant voice among eco-activists.
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The idea of additionality comes from the Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
References
Terra Choice Environmental Marketing (2007) The six sins of greenwashing: a study of environmental claims in North American consumer markets, November 2007. TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, Inc., Philadelphia
DowEthics.com. http://www.dowethics.com/bhopal.com/
The Age (2007) Big oil talks clean but spends dirty. Terry Macalister, 16 Dec 2007. http://business.theage.com.au/big-oil-talks-clean-but-spends-dirty-20071215-1hao.html
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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
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Johnson, E. (2012). The Thin Green Line: Between Sustainability and Greenwash. In: Sustainability in the Chemical Industry. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3834-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3834-8_8
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