Greenwash is Good?

By CSRwire Contributing Writer Bill Baue of Sea Change Media

I vividly remember my surprise when my grad school professor pronounced that plagiarism is actually an important developmental step in learning the complex writing process. After all, plagiarism is the act of lifting information from source material, a skill we writers use all the time. Of course the next step - proper attribution through citation and documentation - is crucial. Harsh punishment for plagiarists who purposely skip this last step makes sense, but at what cost to burgeoning writers who necessarily pass through the step of "plagiarism" on their journey toward writing mastery?

So too with greenwash, according to sustainability guru Hunter Lovins. "Hypocrisy is the first step toward real change," she says. The step before hypocrisy is silent stagnation in the status quo; the step after hypocrisy leads to alignment of aspirational words with actions. Few mortals, much less companies, can achieve this latter goal without passing through a period where our actions don't yet meet our ideals.

To be clear, Lovins isn't advocating for stagnant hypocrisy, rather for acknowledging greenwash as a transitional state on the way to true greening. "If a company makes a claim about something, then you can hold them accountable," Lovins explains. Accountability acts as wind at the backs of hypocrites, pushing them to align their actions with the aspirations embedded in their green claims; companies can resist this wind of accountability, or harness it like a sail to fuel their progress.

A recent Business for Social Responsibility report, written in partnership with Futerra, illustrates the greenwash developmental spectrum in a matrix: "greenwash noise" (akin to stagnant hypocrisy) inhabits the bottom-left quadrant and "effective environmental communications" (eco aspiration-action alignment) the upper-right. Of course, most companies reside somewhere along the continuum of the other diagonal axis, from "misguided greenwash" (long on action, short on articulation) to "unsubstantiated greenwash" (short on accuracy). This formulation reinforces Lovins' notion of the evolutionary nature of green communications.

In the lead-up to its Annual Conference next week, BSR released a report called ESG in the Mainstream that similarly presents a continuum, with current progress still early in ultimate goal of complete integration of environmental, social, and governance considerations in corporate actions and investment decisions. The study also reports on the flip side of greenwashing - what Futerra calls "greenhushing" and Bob Langert coined as "greenmuting" on the McDonald's blog: "…companies are not communicating proactively or regularly on ESG to these mainstream investors."

And, mainstream investors are not asking for ESG information, according to Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz in Fast Company, who claims he's never fielded a question on CSR in quarterly earnings calls. In other words, the company's sails are furled, but the winds of external accountability are failing to blow. In addition to policing greenwashing, perhaps some energy could focus on "greenwatching" - the active encouragement of "steps toward real change."