The 6 Most Half Assed Attempts at Corporate Green Washing
For a person, "going green" is as simple as recycling more, wasting less and always, always, always behaving like an insufferable prick in social situations. But for a corporation, "going green" can be a much harder task that costs million of dollars, thousands of hours of manpower and often painful company-wide cutbacks.
Or, they can opt to do jack shit and just spend all of their money and effort convincing the public otherwise. This is what is referred to as "greenwashing," and it works like this:
Who Needs Water When You Have Coca-Cola?
Listen: India is a beautiful, ancient place with a rich and storied culture and we don't mean to knock it, but it's pretty damned overcrowded. They're practically breathing other people right now, and as a result their resources are stretched taut. Water actually still means life over there--as opposed to the Western world where it's just something that needs to be enhanced with electrolytes or thrown on the t-shirts of girls who hate their fathers.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU DO A BETTER JOB RAISING ME, DADDY?! I mean... um... I'm all wet, teehee!"
So when Coca-Cola came to India and started sucking up thousands of gallons of the nation's precious life-sustaining water each day to make their bottled acid-baths, it kind of rubbed a few (billion) people the wrong way. So to balance out this horrible misappropriation of resources, Coke tried to prove they were environmentally conscious by setting up a donation scheme to help save polar bears... which, of course, aren't native to India.
"Save the bears, they're dy- well, OK, not this one. He's uh... he's doing pretty good."
Then at a San Francisco business conference, Coke also pledged to go water neutral. Well, actually they said they "aspire to put back" what they "take out." Aspire. You can aspire to anything; take a poll of a first grade classroom and you'll get 18 kids aspiring to be astronauts, four aspiring to be policemen, two aspiring to be president and one special child aspiring to be a motorcycle.
Wait, it gets better! Part of the their plan is that if they take all of the water out of one village's wells, they can become "neutral" by putting the water back... into a different village. You know, like how instead of paying back your loan to your bank, they'll allow you to just give the money to some random person instead. As long as you're paying somebody, right?
Wait, isn't "Green" Also a Color?
In a thousand management meetings across the globe, the same idea takes shape:
"Hmm. Environmentalism = Green. Green is a color. Let's color our products green. Holy shit! Done! That's lunch, motherfuckers. Cocaine bisque and vodka sandwiches on me!"
For sheer, clanking brass-balled initiative, we have to admire GM the most for this kind of thing. Producer of the "gets-one-mile-per-Middle-Eastern-skirmish" Hummer, GM desperately needed a way to clean up its name and get some green cred. So, did they go for fuel-efficiency? A desperately needed push to hydrogen power? At least recycled paper in their sales flyers? Nope, they just changed their logo from blue to green. That's it!
"Welp, Earth solved, gentlemen. Earth. Fucking. Solved."
Insiders said the new color was intended "in an effort to show consumers that is leaner, greener, more focused on fuel efficiency and better able to make quick decisions."
...wait, by drawing something you can make it reality?! We had no idea this Harold and the Purple Crayon-like power existed! Hold on one second!
...and you laughed at us, Mrs. Warburton! YOU LAUGHED!
Green Tongued
But it doesn't stop with just a color change on the log. Since there are no laws against outright lying about new-age bullshit buzz words, it was only a matter of time before somebody got the brilliant idea to advertise their products as "green" without having a single green feature.
For instance, it's generally agreed that cloth diapers are more eco-friendly than the disposables. So how do you make people buy the landfill crowding, disposable kind? Use fewer trees? Minimize packaging? Nah. Just color the package green and print some meaningless eco-phrases on it.
New! Gaia-conscious packaging process!
Organic cotton? Yep, it's mentioned - but how much? Is it certified? A deafening silence on that. Recycled packaging? Why yes, a full 20 percent of the packaging is from recycled materials! 20 percent! How green! A full fifth of all of their diapers are- wait, you mean just the thin packaging is 20 percent recycled? Umm, how about the actual diapers inside? Made from pulverized bald eagle genitals? That's... less friendly. That seems downright unnecessary actually.
"Oh, we'll give you something to cry about, Captain Spangle McFreedomwings."
And then there are "Earth-loving" materials companies can say they've converted to, like bamboo. Super fast growing, requiring no cultivation and can grow anywhere... hell, bamboo is the sustainable material of the future, if you believe the ads for products like bamboo clothing.
And, making clothing from bamboo would be pretty damn eco-friendly, except that most mass-market bamboo materials first have to be crushed, ground, dissolved in lye, mixed with carbon disulphide (which is a neurotoxin), then washed in battery acid and spun into fibers. So, on the downside that "natural" bamboo material you're wearing basically took a trip through the toxic waste dump.
Into the Wild Green Yonder
Airlines are constantly getting hammered for their immense carbon footprint, and it's no wonder: One flight from London to LA produces the same amount of carbon dioxide per person as the average commute for a full year. So what is a company to do? Spend money on more efficient planes? Wash the plane? Use auxiliary power, or tow it to the runway to decrease fuel consumption by six percent? C'mon, think outside the box, downshift the paradigm!
"Apply lateral thinking! Cross-promote! Revitalize your revenue streams! Cross the streams! Wait! NO DON-"
Instead, why not apply limits for hand luggage and weight-limits for hold luggage. That saves fuel!
...with the little added bonus of making you assloads of extra cash through surcharges. That's like a school bully stealing your lunch and saying, "You know, worldwide hunger is a real problem. I want you to think about that while I eat your sandwich."
"Fuckin' be more eco-friendly!"
Of course, why just rip off your customers when you can rip them off and humiliate them? Fortunately, Japan (where humiliation is a civic duty) has found a solution:
All Nippon Airways now requests that passengers use the toilets in the terminal before embarking, claiming not that not having to haul around all that urine and feces will reduce carbon emissions by up to five tons per month. They even position "loo monitors" at the gates that ask you to go before boarding.
Eat Hot, Compostable, Non-Toxic, Lead Substitute, Punk!
Say you're a weapons manufacturer who suddenly develops a conscience and realizes that the work you do harms people--what then? Well, you could go the kickass route and use your immense fortune to create a superpowered exo-suit, then fly around exacting drunken justice (sure you're still blowing stuff up, but now it comes from a good place!)
Pictured: charity work.
Or you could go the decidedly less awesome avenue, like BAE, the British weapons manufacturer, who called several well-attended press conferences to reveal their new generation of eco-friendly weaponry. Among the highlights offered were (seriously): lead-free bullets, bang-free bombs that reduce noise pollution and fuel-efficient fighter jets. But why stop there, BAE? Why not just replace your entire air force with smug hipster cyclists who launch explosive volleys of blistering sarcasm at the enemy?
"Yeah, Taliban, I like Coldplay too... when I want to hear what Radiohead sounds like with a massive head trauma."
"We all have a duty of care to ensure that, from cradle to grave, products are being used appropriately and do not do lasting harm," said Dr. Deborah Allen, BAE's Deputy Managing Director of Corporate Responsibility. Dr. Allen (whose title sounds less like a job and more like a new circle of Hell) does have a point: Companies should make sure their products don't do lasting harm...unless they're in the business of making products designed to do lasting harm. It's your job to get people "from cradle to grave" as quickly as possible, BAE--leave the tree-hugging to the hippies before we end up with the world's first wind-powered nuclear bomb.
It's Green Minute!
Earth day, Earth Week, Green Month, Enviro-year, The Rainbow-humpin' Decade, The Don't Kill a Manatee Biennium... most people could give 1/4th of a crap about the abstract colors of time-spans, but for corporations a "green week" is an excellent chance to show just how committed a tiny fraction of their advertising budget is to looking good for a small, predetermined period of time before going right back to the Earth-raping.
For example, NBC's "Green Week" consisted of shows across the entire company being given a "green" emphasis - from Heroes, 30 Rock and The Office, to Martha Stewart and Top Chef. This initiative mandated that programs were to introduce at least one green plot into their shows in an effort to "raise awareness." Most programs just half-assed it, and this resulted in a lot of clumsy, shoe-horned plot lines and awkward soliloquies, but Heroes, at least, really committed to the effort: They recycled the same storyline for the last four years.
Another part of this program involved The Weather Channel running segments all throughout the week on climate change, prepared specifically by their Environmental Unit. Sadly, midway through Green Week, NBC did a little conservation of their own and fired their asses.
"Step into my bamboo-floored, carbon neutral office. 'Why?' Cause you're fuckin' fired!"
The kicker? One of the chief sponsors for "Green Week" was GM... with the Hummer. Somewhere, Captain Planet is getting raped by an unexploded nuclear bomb, and it is still more "environmentally friendly" than that.
Why are we trying to save this planet, again? Look at how it's trying to kill us, in 5 Bizarre Ways the Weather Can Kill You Without Warning. Or check out some Hilarious Acts of Vandalism over at the Huffington Post.
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