Allow me to start with a quick reminder, also shared in my guide Five Keys to Communicate Sustainability for Success: we need all of us in respectful conversation to better approximate the truth, and change the world for the better. In a given blog post like this one, I offer one perspective. But we all need yours, too. Please comment or ask a question, either on my website or by sharing this article on LinkedIn or X, with your perspective (and tag me as appropriate or I may miss it). We all need your voice, your ideas, your experience. You matter! Also please ask here for a sustainability related topic you would like me to clarify in a future article.
Now to this article.
“Greenwashing, noun: the act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary
But are we consciously deceptive or not? In my experience, most corporations do not greenwash on purpose. They are still doing it though. We know it because we can see them—the others, perhaps our competitors—doing it. But we may not see ourselves or our own corporation doing it too. In fact, we tend to see the speck in their eyes and not the plank in ours (Matthew 7:3-5). It’s naturally easier.
Simply put, we are deceiving when our words do not align with the facts, especially our own deeds. We say one thing but do another. And when we deceive, we deceive ourselves by the same token, often more than others. All human beings I know can be deceptive to some extent (me, too!) for many reasons. For one, there’s no end to blind spots and becoming self-aware—integrating into light (clarity!) what was hidden. Two, there’s no perfect, fixed match between a word and the experienced thing it labels. Experience is always different in space-time, even if only by a “nano-speck”. An oak leaf is different from another oak leaf even on the same tree. And the same oak leaf looks different from one day to the next. In addition, none of us sees the same thing in the same way. Diversity and change are natural laws operating at all times in all spaces whether we like it or not. Reality changes but words don’t. The words “oak” and “leaf” stay pretty much the same. So, in so many ways, we are all “greenwashing” to some extent, including green activists, involuntarily.
Ok, I am pushing it a little. Granted, some are being consciously deceptive and deserve to be called out and sanctioned. And corporations have insurance to compensate for harm done involuntarily because they know it is possible. But for the rest, as I have discussed in all previous Season II episodes of this blog, we all can and must still do a lot better to say it like it is, and say only that. So, let’s at least try our best to approximate some kind of tangible reality with our words. And not speak of anything else.
We can also demand from others that they do the same when addressing us, so we may see or hear what they say. We must tell them that we do not understand. We must ask them to be clearer. Again, and again. Tell me, in sufficient detail, what your corporation’s DNA looks like when your CSO says: “sustainability is in our DNA”. Tell me what your limbs are doing, on a typical day of a typical week, when you say: “I manage climate justice”, and how someone has been changed, and into what, as a result of that doing of yours.
Do you have more examples of abstract sentences we tend to use frequently as sustainability professionals? Share them!
Words for Sustainability clarifies one idea, twice a month. Because we cannot solve our big world problems with abstractions.
Be part of the clarifying conversation. Comment, ask questions, and share. Together we can help the entire community reach sustainability in record time. Ask here for a concept you want to see clarified in a future post.
