Quite often, when I’m not dreaming of a different world that reflects my primal longing for wildness and self determination as part of a deeply connected community of like-minded souls, I do feel pleased that I live in the UK. One reason — it’s not a great one compared to the longing dreams, but we are talking about Industrial Civilization here — is that I can call on the services of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Unlike in the USA, for instance, where advertising is sort of regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, in a horribly convoluted and haphazard way, the ASA deals with virtually every form of advertising in much the same way as a well-tuned combine harvester: the grain goes in the hopper, and the unwanted straw is baled up and chucked out the other side – usually with a tart note saying, “Don’t do it again!”

This week alone the ASA, in response to complaints and general looking out for bad stuff, made 11 formal adjudications — these things are pretty thorough — upholding 7 complaints and rejecting 4. Bear in mind that a complaint might be made by a rival advertiser, or for spurious reasons, so these figures are not particularly significant: what is significant, though, are the number of complaints upheld against greenwashing advertisers.

In July, the ASA launched a report, focusing in greenwashing in advertising, which was introduced as follows:

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has today published a report detailing the findings of a stakeholder consultation seminar entitled ‘Environmental Claims in Advertising: Is Green a Grey Area?’. The ASA used the seminar to engage with industry, environmental and consumer groups on establishing where problems arise and setting parameters for environmental and ethical claims.

The June event was held in response to rising concern over what consumers and campaigners see as ‘greenwash’. Claims about CO2 emissions such as carbon ‘neutral’, ‘zero’ or ‘negative’ are particularly open to challenge, as are absolute claims such as ‘100% recycled’ or ‘wholly sustainable’.

The ASA acknowledged that the increased public awareness of environmental issues coupled with fast evolving scientific knowledge and the prolific rise in green initiatives pose a tough challenge for advertisers in ensuring their claims comply with the rules and regulations. A key objective of the consultation event was to give advertisers greater clarity about the current rules on environmental claims to help prevent consumers from being misled or confused, and to gauge stakeholder opinion on the challenges they face.

Now, obviously, the ASA is not anti-advertising per se, it is, after all their raison d’etre (this is like an excerpt from Finnigan’s Wake!), but simply the recognition that advertisers are regularly overstepping the mark is significant in itself. When you look at the adjudications for the last calendar year, using the keyword “environmental”, it gets even more heartening:

Try the search for yourself…

There are some pretty big hitters here: Shell, Lexus, Boeing, British Gas, ExxonMobil…all of whom have been told to change their advertising or not use it again. One example, by Shell advertising the “environmental benefits” of their oil sands abortion includes this damning comment by the adjudicators:

The ASA noted Shell’s argument that they were committed to meeting the world’s energy needs in social, economic and environmentally responsible ways. We understood that oil sands were composed of sand, silt, clay, water and bitumen, which could be upgraded into synthetic crude oil. We also understood that the Canadian oil sands covered over 140,000 square kilometres of Alberta, with each individual mine ranging from 150 to 200 square kilometres, and contained 173 billion barrels of recoverable bitumen. We further understood that the oil sands were either strip-mined from open pits or, where the oil sands were deeper, bitumen was heated so it could flow to a well and be pumped to the surface for in situ extraction.

We noted that a 2006 report by Canada’s National Energy Board, the independent federal agency that regulates Canada’s energy industry, stated that the large scale of the oil sands developments had considerable social and environmental impacts, including those on water conservation, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), land disturbance and waste management. We understood from that report that approved oil sands mining projects were licensed to divert 370 million cubic meters of fresh water per year from the Athabasca River, but that despite some recycling, almost all of the water withdrawn for oil sands operations ended up in waste tailing ponds. We also understood that demand for freshwater for in situ projects was projected to more than double between 2004 and 2015. We noted the report stated that the mining of bitumen and synthetic crude oil from oil sands produced higher GHG emissions than from the production of conventional crude oil, and had been identified as the largest contributor to GHG emissions growth in Canada…

Sheer bureaucratic poetry.

The advert was banned: up yours, Shell! Thanks, ASA!

Question: When a media company decides they will start a campaign against greenwashing, but still has a few chinks in their armour, does that invalidate their campaign?

I’m not 100% sure of the answer, but I’m going to give The Guardian the benefit of the doubt, given that they have an impressive track record in environmental reporting (probably unrivalled in the mass-media) and have consistently provided a voice to (almost) the entire range of environmental opinions in a representative manner. Sadly, being representative means that the few voices calling for a removal of Industrial Civilization are not heard; but I think that will also change soon.

So, it is with a small fanfare, and a smile on my face that The Unsuitablog welcomes The Guardian into the Anti-Greenwashing frey: they have launched a new Thursday column which started by laying into a subject that I had meant to cover some time ago – “green” electricity tariffs.

Most of us are not foolish enough to suppose that our electricity supplier specially packages up “green energy” for us, and shoves it down the wires. We just get regular electricity, of course. But most of us would suppose that if we pay a green tariff, someone somewhere generates more renewable energy – and burns less fossil fuel – than they would if we hadn’t done our bit for the environment.

But no. In fact, we are usually subsidising the power companies to do what they are required by law to do already. Worse, despite us paying through our green noses, they still can’t meet their targets. Then they rub our noses in it by selling what “green electricity” they do produce over and over again.

The writer of the column is Fred Pearce, author of “When The Rivers Run Dry” amongst other works, and long time popularist of environmental issues for New Scientist. In fact, his efforts at New Scientist have been remarkable in turning a once staid and non-reflective journal into one that reflects the issues of the day in a frank and honest way.

Let’s hope that The Guardian doesn’t pull any punches when dealing with greenwashing: especially the kind carried out by its advertisers – now that will be an interesting test of nerve.

Yes, people really are getting the message about greenwashing and, at least for the moment, some of it is being stamped down upon. I highlighted an appalling advertisement by Lexus in March 2008, which had been banned for claiming “High performance, Low emissions, Zero guilt”. Lexus subsequently toned down their adverts, but still implied that driving one was environmentally acceptable.

The full story is told in The Guardian:

A national press advertising campaign for a Lexus hybrid four-wheel drive car has been banned after it claimed it was “perfect for today’s climate”.

Viewers complained that the ad misleadingly implied that it caused “little or no harm” to the environment.

The press ad, for the Lexus RX 400h, made the claim: “perfect for today’s climate. (And tomorrow’s) … Driving the world’s first luxury hybrid SUV makes environmental, and economic, sense …”

Four complaints were made to the Advertising Standards Authority that the claims were misleading because “they implied that the car caused little or no harm to the environment and gave a misleading impression of the car’s CO2 emissions in comparison with other vehicles”.

Lexus said that the use of the word “climate” in the ad was meant to operate at “two levels”.

One was that in the current economic market the Lexus was offered with attractive financial packages, the other that hybrid cars were more environmentally friendly.

Lexus said that it did not claim that the vehicle caused “little or no harm” to the environment, just that it was more environmentally friendly than standard premium SUV vehicles.

But the ASA said the ad implied that the vehicle’s emission rate was low in relation to all vehicles and that readers were likely to understand that “the car caused little or no harm to the environment”.

The watchdog concluded that the ads were likely to mislead and banned the ads.

Lexus said it amended the copy after receiving the complaints.

If it only takes 4 complaints to get an advert banned, it must mean the ASA are getting pretty strict on greenwashing. If only this were the case in the rest of the world.

Incredible, a nation acting in the best interests of the planet. Ok, it’s Norway, and they do have lots of gas and oil, but even so, a snub of this magnitude deserves to be highlighted, especially when it involves one of the most destructive corporations on Earth:

The Norwegian government has launched an unprecedented attack on the UK mining giant Rio Tinto, selling a £500m holding in the company after accusing it of “grossly unethical conduct” relating to environmental damage.

The Norwegian Ministry of Finance released a statement yesterday saying it had “decided to exclude the company Rio Tinto from the Government Pension Fund – Global, due to a risk of contributing to severe environmental damage”.

The government has blocked its $375bn (£213bn) sovereign wealth fund, known worldwide as its “oil fund”, from investing in Rio over its mining operations in Indonesia, in a move that could drive other investors to review their holdings in the group.

(from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ethical-investors-attack-rio-tinto-924661.html)

The bloody struggle between native West Papuans whose land was stolen from them by the Indonesian government in the 1960s has been well documented, and it is such a stark example of corporate / government injustice that I made a point of highlighting it in A Matter Of Scale:

The tribal people of West Papua live in a manner that is entirely alien to most of modern humanity. According to Bernard Nietschmann: “The people of West Papua are different in all respects from their rulers in [Indonesia]: language, religions, identity, histories, systems of land ownership and resource use, cultures and allegiance.” Imagine, for a moment, living in such a way that you had no concept of outside rules, beliefs and culture; when, suddenly, the land you have nurtured for centuries with delicate care is ripped away from you to be handed to a corporation intent on mining it for metals, leaving the land in tatters and thousands of tonnes of toxic spoil leaching poison into the ground. This is precisely what happened in the years following 1967 under the despotic leadership of President Suharto of Indonesia (who also forcibly took control of the country following a military coup in 1965). Two large mining companies from “democratic” nations; Freeport, based in the USA, and Rio Tinto Zinc, a UK / Australian conglomerate; were handed the mineral rights for a large part of West Papua in return for generous donations to the Suharto regime. Despite Suharto’s bloodthirsty behaviour across his empire, including responsibility for the slaughter of half a million Indonesians in 1965, the CEO of Freeport, James Roberts, called Suharto, “a compassionate man.”

The native West Papuans have never had the land returned to them, primarily because there is no profit to be made in giving a peaceful, nature respecting people stewardship of a region under which there are rich mineral resources to be plundered.

Now go back to the article in The Independent, and read the responses of the Rio Tinto PR machine:

A Rio spokesman said the company felt “surprise and disappointment” at the decision, adding it had come out of the blue after the company had held meetings with the ministry.

Rio countered the claims [of the Norwegian government] in a written statement to the government that it “maintains the highest environmental standards at all its operations wherever they are located, and it contributes technical support to its joint venture partners to ensure that the most appropriate solutions are identified and implemented”.

No mention of human rights abuses, of course — they are totally undefendable — and the “highest environmental standards” must be referring to the industry’s own definition, in which case this is a combination of both an absurd reframing of what environmental protection means, and a phenomenally large pile of greenwash.

Norway, for today The Unsuitablog salutes you!

In the wake of Phil Woolas’ absurd proclamation that all laws are wrong and that the burden of proof now lies with the defendent (imagine how that would pan out following a bruising Saturday night), Lord Smith of Finsbury has decided that it’s time to speak out about the UK Government’s recent torrent of greenwash.

Ostensibly speaking to The Independent about the need to make a tactical retreat in the light of rising sea levels and increasing storminess, he also took some fierce swipes at the government’s two-faced attitude to environmental issues:

*Building a third runaway at Heathrow Airport would be a “mistake” because of pollution and aircraft noise;

*Plans for a new generation of coal-fired electric power stations should be abandoned until the Government is certain they will not pump out harmful gases;

*The proposed Severn barrage will destroy fish stocks and wreck bird habitats.

This, of course, means that Lord Smith will shortly be out of a job, but for the time being The Unsuitablog salutes him for daring to stand up to UK Business Champions PLC (a.k.a. the UK Government) at such a crucial time. No wonder they are so keen to scrap the House of Lords — too many free thinkers for comfort…

Believe it or not, I like giving out good news. Ok, I would really like it if the good news was something really tangible and Earth changing, but even a little bit of good news makes the day pass a bit better; which is why I have just come off the telephone feeling slightly warm and not my usual bitter, twisted self.

It started with a random search for greenwashing on the Internet, which turned up a PR company called Futerra. As you know, I hate commerce in its normal form and despise greenwash; so a company that seeks to show other companies how to make themselves look environmentally sound is like a rag to a bull. Their client list is very interesting, including government agencies and corporations, plus a large number of one-off environmental campaigns. Oh, and Greenpeace International are there; which either means they haven’t done their homework (not for the first time) or the PR company isn’t that bad.

Futerra mainly carry out internal marketing, i.e. gearing staff up on how to do the “green” messaging right. They also help companies with their public perception, presenting a great opportunity for greenwashing; so I wondered what they would think about a global coal and bauxite mining company (about as bad as you can get) wanting to look good.

Futerra: “If you’re looking for public perception, that’s not the type of area that we work in.”

Me: “Is that just because of the nature of the company?”

Fut: “Yes.”

Me: “Because of the nature of your company or our company?”

Fut: “Well, the nature of our company [mentions standard trade criteria], but we are in the business of promoting green products, green behaviours, sustainable behaviour, so we wouldn’t promote coal…we wouldn’t even promote clean coal.”

So there you go. A PR company that actually stands by what it says, and may even make some companies a little less likely to greenwash.

Now, back to my bitter, twisted persona…

There are few things more entertaining than when two different businesses, both loaded with money, battle it out for supremacy , with the only losers being one or other industry. This particular battle is taking place between the multi-millionaire (billionaire) stable owners of Newmarket, in the English Midlands, and the air industry, led by National Air Traffic Services, a recently privatised air infrastructure business. It has become a turf war…literally.

From the point of view of the avid greenwash spotter, anything that promises to dent the imperialism of the air industry has got to be good news; yet the racing industry is run by people who spend their lives dashing from one international stable to another — by plane, of course — only interspersed by journeys in their leather and burnished walnut lined Range Rovers to and from large lunches where they discuss how much more money they can make.

Surprisingly, I don’t have any sympathy for either side. Here is the Observer newspaper taking up the hilarious story:

Plans that would see up to 33 planes an hour, circling over a major horse breeding area, threaten to drive away the world’s top stud owners, including the ruler of oil-rich Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, and Kirsten Rausing, the Tetra Pak heiress.

Owners and trainers have hired aviation and planning law expert John Steel, QC, to force the National Air Traffic Services (Nats), the UK’s leading air-traffic management company, to rethink its proposals, which they say could result in the death of Newmarket as headquarters of the racing industry.

‘The proposed stacking is right over the top of the horse-breeding area,’ said Alastair Watson, chairman of the Newmarket Stud Farmers Association and manager of Rausing’s Lanwades stud. ‘Breeders have chosen the area for its quiet environs. There is obviously the possibility of them moving away.’

An urgent meeting to discuss the proposals was attended by representatives from Sheikh Mohammed’s stud, as well as from the Newmarket Stud Farmers’ Association, the National Stud, the Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association and Tattersalls, the UK’s leading bloodstock auctioneers. ‘Brood mares come from around the world to be covered here. It could really knock confidence,’ said Louise Kemble, chief executive of the breeders’ association.

Oh, how I laughed!

Blimey! Some good news – it’s not a company that have decided to stop greenwashing (that would surely be something significant) but it does seem that people are waking up to the sins of Greenwashing. British Gas (or BG, as they like to be known around the world) tried to convince the British people that they were selling gas that was “carbon neutral”, as well as claiming that their electricity (yes, they sell electricity too, produced mainly with gas) was the greenest around.

Wrong on both counts, really wrong…

“A TV and press ad campaign for British Gas has been banned by the advertising watchdog for making false green claims about an energy tariff. The ad regulator ruled that the TV commercial was misleading and should not be shown again in the same form.”

“A second ad – a national newspaper advertorial, for the same ‘green’ tariff – was criticised by the ASA for making the claim it was the ‘greenest domestic energy tariff’. The company admitted that the [Energywatch] website did not rank tariffs in order of “greenness” and that there was no industry-wide methodology.”

(from The Guardian)

With a history of energy exploration in the Amazon, and interests in drilling for gas in the pristine Arctic wilderness, BG (or Bad Greenwashers) have felt the first slap from the increasing number of people who won’t tolerate hypocrisy. Keep it up readers – don’t let them get away with it.