From aeroplanes to arms dealers: the real cost of ‘greenwashing’

By Dave Wood, Avon Needs Trees CEO

Over the last year or two I’ve been approached by everyone from big oil to aeroplane manufacturers, arms dealers to polluting water companies. It’s clear why. For companies that feel bad about what they are doing, getting cosy with a popular tree planting project looks great to their staff, shareholders and customers. But how do we avoid the allure of greenwashing money? Especially when it’s an amount that might get a great new woodland project over the line.

We all know greenwashing does no favours for climate and nature as that green gloss perpetuates whatever damage is being caused, rather than encouraging change. Greenwashing can hoodwink climate-conscious customers into doing more harm than good. Increasingly this is making the public wary of environment projects themselves, with people increasingly assuming greenwashing must be involved in any new project. It also makes the public suspicious of the many amazing companies who are doing their bit, such as our amazing corporate partners at Avon Needs Trees.

But before I go on, what exactly is corporate greenwashing? There are lots of definitions out there, but to my mind it involves companies that do harm to climate and nature. Rather than reduce that harm they make it look like they are doing something great for the environment, whilst they continue to do damage. This is great PR for the corporate, but let’s look at the negative effects:

Greenwashing example 1 – carbon off-setting

You’ll see a lot of firms talking about being carbon neutral. This is an important goal but for some this means rather than reducing their carbon impact, they just off-set it instead. In isolation, carbon off-setting can send the message to businesses they can carry on doing what they are doing without the negative impact. At the click of a button their conscience can be clear.

So what’s the problem? You can’t click a button to store carbon in nature. The carbon from that international flight might take 100 years to offset by planting a tree. It’s seen as more ethical to offset carbon that has already been stored, so your flight is offset against four trees planted ten years ago. The problem is that the trees have been storing up carbon for ten years, doing great work, and then it’s all wiped out in a single flight.

It has to be stressed that lots of businesses work hard to reduce their carbon impact and then offset the remainder that cannot be reduced and this is to be lauded. But carbon-offsetting being the go-to solution to appear climate-friendly is harmful. It’s also important not to conflate carbon-offsetting with other, more positive schemes like Biodiversity Net Gain.

Greenwash example 2 – taking credit for tree-planting, but on the cheap

Companies wow us by telling us how many thousands of trees they’ve planted, but let’s look under the bonnet of the claim.  A tree sapling costs less than £1 to buy but the cost of planting and growing a tree can be up to £25 when you factor in tree protection, aftercare and land costs. If a company claims it has planted 10,000 trees by spending £10,000 on trees where does the other £240,000 come from? At best this is claiming trees that they’ve only contributed a few pennies in the pound for.  At worst this might be tree planting on the cheap, with no protection or aftercare. If you plant 10,000 trees and they all die you’ve expended carbon to plant them and delivered no benefit.

Luckily there are many, many companies out there that are not seeking to greenwash, who look at the true cost of growing a woodland and contribute fairly.  

Greenwashing example 3 – ‘free’ tree-planting corporate days 

Company tree-planting days are amazing. We’ve hosted scores of them and I’ve had the best feedback.  People feel refreshed, energised, valued by their employer, more connected with their colleagues. Best of all you can report, internally, and externally, that you’ve planted hundreds of trees.

Is there a problem? If we return to the previous example it is clearly greenwashing to lay claim to a hundred trees by providing one day’s labour when the true cost of that may run into thousands. There is also rarely any such thing as ‘free’! 

Again my experience is fortunate. We work with a lot of great companies and have rounded, positive partnerships with them.  Many of them make donations, provide pro-bono support and we arrange tree-planting corporate days. In fact I’d go so far as to say that we rely on our corporate partners, without their generosity we could not do what we do.  

I also fully respect those charities that do accept donations I would not, as these are subjective choices and based on what’s best for each charity concerned. There’s also the counter-view that if certain companies cannot donate money to good causes, what will happen to that money instead? I do not personally agree, but it’s important to acknowledge the nuance in many real-life cases.  

So, cutting to the chase: how do I recognise green-washing and do we actually avoid it? At Avon Needs Trees we assess all corporate enquiries against a strict policy, researching their activities and questioning their commitment to reducing their own environmental impact. This means an automatic ‘no’ to a lot of potential donations: if it’s aeroplanes or fossil fuels there is not much they can do, the nature of their industry is not compatible with us. This all costs us, as a charity, to make these assessments and send the message that we will have nothing to do with greenwashing. But that does mean that our corporate partners are all companies we are proud to work with, and we’re happy to tell the world.

However this does make it difficult for a start-up charity with little unrestricted income. On many occasions we’ve turned away sizeable donations because we do not want to give legitimacy to greenwashing. This means we rely even more on our corporate partners and individual monthly donors for the work we do. But it’s worth it. We get to hold our heads up high and call out greenwashing for what it is. We want no part of it.

 

Photo credits: Alex Carl Turner, Daisy Brasington, and Canopy and Stars