Thanks to the free-think and creativity fest that is B3TA, I am able to produce a very long post with lots of pictures that requires almost no effort on my part :-)

All hail, Corporate Logos That Tell The Truth (my personal selection)…

First off, an even better subvertising job than mine:

The purity of Nestle products:

No sweatshops to see here:

BP’s real business:

It wasn’t us!

Now, where should we order the next airstrike?

And finally, because people still think WWF cares:

Have a lovely weekend!

Nothing more to add, just a wonderful spoof of the Amazon web site, undermining the “buy stuff or you’re nobody!” message. Amazero indeed :-)

For the whole page go to Do The Green Thing

Apparently it’s ok to clearfell forests providing they are certified as sustainable.

I suppose there’s a precedent for this: Dick Cheney, as we all know, said it was ok to torture prisoners of war enemy non-combatants so long as someone in the US government claimed it wasn’t really torture, or they were able to simple redesignate the people being tortured.

So when the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a “non-profit” (oh, that phrase is so useful if you are a greenwasher) whose board is awash with timber industry cronies and various other representatives of the industrial machine, come along with the idea of their own certification scheme, who can blame them if it just happens to be of the utmost benefit to the industry. Actually, I really want you to stop reading this for a minute and go along to the SFI web site: read the biographies of the board members, and then come back here with perhaps a little anger in your veins…

Thanks to the people at ForestEthics, the greenwashing carried out by SFI is a little more in the public eye now. After their antics at the Greenbuild conference in Phoenix, Arizona a few days ago, the people at SFI seem to have become a little annoyed:

As sustainability practices continue to evolve, it is important that planners, designers, builders, customers and architects know the source of the wood used in their project, and increase the wood in their projects! Today in North America we are all fortunate to have a number of strong forest certification standards, which means the building community have a lot of options when it comes to responsibly sourced wood. But the fact remains that just 10% of the world’s forests are certified – collectively, we all need to promote credible forest certification to influence the other 90%.

As you may know, USGBC is currently reviewing and revising its wood certification benchmarks under LEED. I strongly urge them to recognize all credible forest certification programs, including SFI. This is really a huge opportunity for the USGBC to take a leadership role, end the certification debates and encourage more forest certification worldwide by focusing on sustainability. The certification debates, and subsequent PR stunts, take away from the real goal we should all be working towards – responsible forestry.

The “certification debates” that the SFI and other organisations decry so much, are looking into the failure of certification schemes worldwide to provide adequate protection for ecosystems — they are vital, as are the “PR stunts” such as the one below, that highlight the greenwashing to a wider audience.

I will leave it to ForestEthics to tell the story of their fun at Greenbuild…

Greenwashing by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) was an unexpected addition to the agenda at this year’s Greenbuild–the world’s largest green building conference–in Phoenix, Arizona. Today–the day after keynote speaker Al Gore exhorted Greenbuild to call out greenwashing–ForestEthics released a large floating banner exposing SFI as a greenwasher.

On the conference’s opening day, ForestEthics ran an ad in USA Today’s Phoenix edition spotlighting SFI’s “greenwashing practice” of certifying forest destruction as ‘sustainable’. Copies of this ad and a brochure detailing SFI’s shortcomings circulated throughout the massive conference–with an estimated attendance of 25,000 people.

The ad targeted three prominent window companies for their ties to SFI, as well as to “notorious” California clearcutter Sierra Pacific Industries.

These actions add powerful visual elements to a campaign that began in September when ForestEthics filed legal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that became the focus of an article in the New York Times on September 12.

In its FTC complaint, ForestEthics described how SFI, funded and managed primarily by large logging companies, gives its seal of approval to the logging practices of these same companies that harm people and wildlife, damage water resources and destroy forests.

In October, the Sierra Club also filed a complaint with SFI, presenting scientific evidence that SFI certified logging by Weyerhaeuser on extremely steep and unstable mountainsides in SW Washington despite publicly available evidence that these mountainsides were prone to landslides. In a major regional rainstorm in December 2007,massive landslides did occur on logging sites certified by SFI as sustainable, producing downstream logjams and record flooding. The report submitted to the IRS focused on SFI’s nonprofit status, as SFI’s funding and activities serve the private interests of wood and paper companies that want a ‘green’ image. This is not a proper purpose for an organization with the same nonprofit status that the IRS gives to public charities.

Edit: For the record, I have no faith in FSC or any other certification scheme, nor do I think ForestEthics are squeaky clean – certainly I do not endorse them, only the action they carried out.

On the night of Dec. 2nd and 3rd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site.

These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal. In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage- and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water; trichloroethene, a chemical that has been shown to impair fetal development, was found at levels 50 times higher than EPA safety limits. Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women. In 2001, Michigan-based chemical corporation Dow Chemical purchased Union Carbide, thereby acquiring its assets and liabilities. However Dow Chemical has steadfastly refused to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the victims, or disclose the composition of the gas leak, information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims.

(from The Bhopal Medical Appeal website)

After 25 years of greenwashing and denial of their abhorrent abandonment of thousands of chemically-scarred people, Union Carbide and subsequently their owners Dow Chemical appear to have met their match. The temporary abandonment of the London site says more about Dow Chemical than any press statement or defensive advert ever could have: it says, “We refuse to face up to reality. We are in denial of the facts, and wish to remain in denial until the poisoned of Bhopal have died, and the world has moved on.” The people living with disease and deformity will eventually die, and the world will move on — probably because some other even more toxic event overshadows this one — which is why it is vital to keep reminding, and keep attacking those responsible.

The Yes Men take up the story of this brilliant stunt:

A new, beautifully-designed line of bottled water – this time not from the melting Alps, nor from faraway, clean-water-deprived Fiji, but rather from the contaminated ground near the site of the 1984 Bhopal catastrophe – scared Dow Chemical’s London management team into hiding today.

Twenty Bhopal activists, including Sathyu Sarangi of the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal, showed up at Dow headquarters near London to find that the entire building had been vacated.

Had they not fled, Dow employees could have read on the bottles’ elegant labels:

B’eau-Pal: Our Story

The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world’s largest industrial accident. To this day, Dow Chemical (who bought Union Carbide) has refused to clean up, and whole new generations have been poisoned. For more information, please visit http://www.bhopal.org.

The launch of “B’eau-Pal” water came as Bhopal prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal catastrophe, and coincides with the release of an official report by the Sambhavna Trust showing that local groundwater, vegetables, and breast milk are contaminated by toxic quantities of nickel, chromium, mercury, lead, and volatile organic compounds. The report describes how a majority of children in one nearby community are born with serious medical problems traceable to the contamination.

The attractive yet toxic product, developed by the Bhopal Medical Appeal and the Yes Men with pro-bono help from top London creative design firm Kennedy Monk , highlights Dow’s continued refusal to take responsibility for the disaster.

Though Dow has consistently refused to clean up the mess in Bhopal, they have taken numerous steps to clean up their image. In a recent press release, for example, Andrew Liveris, Dow’s Chairman and CEO, noted that “lack of clean water is the single largest cause of disease in the world and more than 4,500 children die each day because of it.” He went on to assert that “Dow is committed to creating safer, more sustainable water supplies for communities around the world.”

The Yes Men met Liveris’ attempt to greenwash Dow’s environmental record with a challenge.

“Since Liveris earns $16,182,544 per year, he could give each of the children who die worldwide for lack of clean water $10 per day to buy Evian, Fiji Water, or Perrier,” said Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men. “Or, for vastly less money, he could build them clean-water pipelines, like the ones that Bhopal so badly needs.”

Dow’s greenwashing comes while Bhopal is experiencing an extremely rare drought, just three years after facing its greatest floods ever. “Even though people are already dying by the hundreds of thousands, and we know that climate change will kill many more, companies like Dow are not being forced to cut back on emissions,” said the Sambhavna Clinic’s Sathyu Sarangi. “Bhopal should be a lesson to the world – one we must learn before it’s too late for all of us.”

Kudos to Unsuitablog commenter and avid Flickr user, Toban Black for the neat bit of subvertising (admittedly not for real, that would be really cool) in the image above, and for lots of interesting photos on the subject of capitalism. I particularly like his notes on each photo, which include quotations, information and links to lots of other resources.

This is a set I will be going back to frequently. Cheers, Toban.

Advertising is one of the main methods by which people are encouraged to continue feeding the global economic machine; it is a Tool Of Disconnection, a tool to ensure humans are kept tied to civilization and away from the kinds of connections that really matter. Advertising is pernicious; it changes the way people think; it implants cultural ideas and concepts in people of all ages, and it makes people do things that they otherwise would not do. Advertising is brainwashing, and it works…for the system.

Here is an extract from A Matter Of Scale:

On 1 April 2007, the Brazilian city of São Paolo officially became billboard free. The tide of advertising that had swamped every physical dimension of the city had become intolerable, even to the local authorities; such was the scale of the problem. The law that demanded the removal of all billboards was – incredibly – passed by a huge majority, with the only “no” voter being an advertising executive on the council. People are happy, except the advertisers, who made their position clear after the law was proposed:

Border, the Brazilian Association of Advertisers, was up in arms over the move. In a statement released on 2 October, the date on which law PL 379/06 was formally approved by the city council, Border called the new laws “unreal, ineffective and fascist”. It pointed to the tens of thousands of small businesses that would have to bear the burden of altering their shop fronts under regulations “unknown in their virulence in any other city in the world”.

We’re all smart enough to see through the rhetoric of these comments: “unreal, ineffective and fascist” are perfect descriptors for the synthetic, disconnected, material world that advertising has forced upon humanity – a world that is swamped with branding, corporate “messages”, sponsorship, flyers, free sheets, popups and numerous other forms of corporate propaganda. São Paolo may have lost its billboards, but the advertisers can still feed their messages to the public through newspapers, magazines, television, radio; even schools, into which corporations don’t so much sneak advertising, as blatantly trumpet the goodness of their products and services.

Almost every school in the UK collects Tesco and Sainsburys supermarket tokens, through which they can acquire computers and books. Every token handed over by every child is a graphic advertisement for competing brands that want their cut of the family shopping budget, and the future loyalty of the children who carry these little pieces of paper into the classroom. North America has it far worse: “It is never enough to tag the schools with a few logos. Having gained a foothold, the brand managers are now doing what they have done in music, sports and journalism outside the schools: trying to overwhelm their host. They are fighting for their brands to become not the add-on but the subject of education.” As you have seen, the individual is not offered real choice in this culture of consumption – simply “Conchoice”. The real choice has already been lost in favour of corporations that have sold entire populations down the commercial river: the individual’s ultimate dream is no longer a response to “what can I achieve in my life?” but “what can I buy?”

When I receive an email suggesting that there is such a thing as “Eco Billboards” then my blood starts to boil: which “Eco Billboards” are these that advertise cars, shopping malls, luxury holidays, political parties, energy companies? Tell me about your brave plan:

Hi Keith,

The outdoor advertising industry is getting an “eco” makeover! From now on major billboard companies like Clear Channel Outdoor will only accept ECO-posters created with polyethylene, the most commonly-recycled plastic in the world.

ECO-posters are 100% recyclable and better for the environment – the previous 30-sheet posters contributed about 150 million pounds annually to the nation’s landfills. ECO-posters also maintain their visible integrity longer, 90 days as opposed to 30 days with the previous posters. Other benefits include:

· No flagging or peeling with these single-sheet executions
· No more glue and paper – the new posters attach directly to the structure
· Visual quality is comparable to vinyl executions
· Unaffected by weather

I’d be happy to arrange a time for you to speak with an executive from Clear Channel Outdoor to discuss why they are making this change, as well how it will help the environment, if you’re interested.

Kind regards,
Sharon
________________________________________


Sharon Oh
Account Executive – Public Relations
Brainerd Communicators, Inc.
521 Fifth Avenue, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10175
Tel: 212-986-6667
Fax: 212-986-8302
oh@braincomm.com

Visit our website at http://www.braincomm.com

Tell me, Sharon, do you feel morally justified in calling this an “eco” makeover, or are you just greenwashing? What does your heart tell you?

Now this is what should happen to billboards: preferably through the actions of the public, rather than any political party. Removing advertising is freeing people’s minds: the only ecological billboard is one that contains no advertising.

Enjoy this story:

Exposure is what Greenwashers fear most of all — serious exposure can destroy a campaign; it can destroy a reputation; it can destroy a brand; it can destroy a government. It has happened before and it will happen again.

Exposure is the nexus between ignorance and awareness.

On this short journey we have learnt to spot greenwash from a mile away – recognising the tell-tale smirk in the eyes of the publicist and the lies between the lines written in your morning paper. You can spot greenwash.

We have also learnt how to investigate the murky recesses of the greenwasher’s mind and dig out the dirt that the corporate lobbyist or the public servant wants to keep hidden away. You can find out their secrets.

Now it is time for the final stage in our journey: Exposing The Greenwashers.

Doing It Right

I’m assuming you have all the information you need to expose the greenwasher, and just want to get it out there. Regardless of whether you do the exposing yourself, or rely on some other willing (or unwilling ;-) ) party to do the exposure for you, there are four factors that will determine the success of your efforts — four factors, that you have control over.

Timing

Timing can be pretty complicated to get right, especially when you are not executing the exposure yourself, but a good rule of thumb is: The quicker the better. As an example of how important this can be; when I found out about the Triangle Of Peace Foundation, I found, to my delight, that they had foolishly neglected to use that phrase anywhere on the Internet, so by investigating and exposing the issues online, and also republishing the article to a few places, I was able to ensure that anyone who looked for information as a result of the newspaper advertisment, would come across my negative article straight away.

Sometimes you need time to investigate properly, though, but that may not be a problem if you happen to have received an embargoed press release: simply carry out the exposure before the embargo date! It’s also useful to take advantage of a topical item, such as the annual financial results of a company, to inject a frisson into the proceedings; or perhaps you might want to do something under cover of night (for safety), or at a weekend to ensure your exposure is visible when business opens on Monday morning. However you time it, though, do it while the information is fresh.

Medium

You probably can’t afford to buy a minute of peak advertising time on a network TV channel in order to place your alternative message — in fact, the chances of a media cartel ever allowing such a message is slim to none (and slim just left town) so lack of funds isn’t necessarily an issue; it’s finding a medium that complements both the message you are sending, and also the greenwash that is being purveyed. Obviously web sites are one place to do things, but without an audience you’re going to struggle to get your message out. But there are ways to use a medium to best effect — for instance:

– Phoning up a radio station to make an on topic point, then changing the subject halfway through to do your exposure
– Subvertising a billboard or other useful surface close to (or in) a premises belonging to the target
– Inserting information inside magazines and newspapers at news stands / newsagents
– Sending fake letters “from” the organization, or calling up (remember the rules about secrecy) “on their behalf” to give an alternate take on their greenwashing to a journalist or TV station

The medium is not the message, you just need to use your imagination to use the medium well.

Simplicity

Your target audience are probably not going to be in the same headspace as you, in terms of understanding why you are doing the exposure in the first place. Subtlety may be fine for media-savvy showoffs, but clever has to be very clever indeed if the message is to work. The best strategy is just keep it simple. If an oil company are lying about their emissions, say that they are lying about their emissions; if a politician has been a hypocrite, expose the hypocrisy in simple language; if an environmental charity are getting too close to a corporation for comfort, say how uncomfortable this is, and say it loud and often enough to make sure your message gets across.

Simple language; minimum words; clear graphics: maximum understanding.

Scale

You are only capable of doing so much, so don’t beat yourself up about not being able to save the world on your own: you can’t. Most greenwashing is carried out by organizations with lots of money, lots of contacts and the means to get their lies across to a huge audience; but that doesn’t have to matter, so long as you understand the target audience. Let’s face it, and here is a BIG CAVEAT: the vast majority of people are not that interested in whether a company is green or not; neither are they that interested in changing their views once they have been set. Greenwash is aimed at those bodies and individuals who are interested, so regardless of whether BP spend millions of Euros telling the world they are the kings of renewable energy, you only need to target those people likely to have been stirred by this message.

It makes things seem a lot easier, doesn’t it.

Let’s say a big press release goes out saying how Ford are reducing their car plant emissions (while still producing huge SUVs and pickups). Do a search for the text of the release, and you can find out who has reported their lies – you might find that by approaching these very same people, you can embarrass them into retracting, or at least amending their reports; or you might just want to target the fool who blindly pasted the lies into their report, and expose them. It’s an idea, at least. What I am saying is that you don’t need to operate at the scale of the greenwasher if you are clever enough; a targeted exposure of a very embarrassing fact can be just as effective.

Going Further

It’s clear from this article that there are a host of different ways to expose greenwashers; I have only scratched the surface, and you can probably think of lots more. If you feel you’re not able to do as much as you want on your own, then perhaps you need to join a network of anti-greenwashers: Earth First! are a good port of call; or you could send out a request via Indymedia; and there is now a Facebook group which might be able to help you out…

Remember, also, that exposing greenwash is an effective form of Sabotage, and when you join the ranks of the saboteurs there is a whole world of change that you can be creating!