Greenwashing
From Wiki for Sustainable IT
Greenwashing is the practice of presenting an organisation, a product or a service as more environmentally responsible than it actually is.
Common patterns
- highlighting a marginal improvement while the main impact is unchanged ;
- communicating on intentions rather than measured results ;
- using vague terms with no shared definition, such as "green", "clean" or "carbon neutral", without stating the method ;
- offsetting emissions rather than reducing them (see Rebound effect for a related dynamic) ;
- selecting a favourable perimeter, for instance reporting only the use phase and omitting manufacturing.
How to tell the difference
Three questions are usually enough: what is measured, over what perimeter, and compared with what baseline. A claim that cannot answer these is a communication exercise.
