What’s Going On Here?
This week Amazon announced a 2-billion-dollar Climate Pledge to achieve zero carbon by 2040. The venture capital fund will power development into green operations across multiple industries, including transportation and logistics, energy generation, storage and utilisation, manufacturing and materials, circular economy, and food and agriculture. Pretty extensive eh?
What Does This Mean?
This year we’ll see an onslaught of environmental pledges coming from the world’s biggest polluters, outlining their commitment to catch up, reduce and repair their environmental damage.
Pledges such as this win the company lots of positive press and attention. Whilst there’s no denying that pumping money into green technologies and operations is a good thing, it feels like an important time to put our critical glasses on, step back and look at the wider context, before giving Amazon anything close to a pat on the back.
| ???????? Amazon is currently worth 315 billion dollars, and their profits grew by 22% in 2019 ???????? Tax avoidance, poor employee conditions – growth which has been at the expense of people ???????? Their emissions from burning fossil fuels grew by 18.5% in 2019 – growth which has come from exploiting the environment, not to mention contributing to over consumerism ???????? Amazon employees have been striking since last September to put urgent pressure on Bezos and senior management to take climate change seriously ???????? In January, Microsoft announced a 1 billion dollar carbon capture fund. This is one of many recent environmental reform policies from global corporations. |
A company as big as Amazon should be leading the way, not responding to pressure by doubling the money of their competitors on the table. And it’s not the job of their employees to wake them up to their environmental responsibility.
A bit of context here helps to view this pledge more sceptically: do they genuinely care about creating a better future – or are they simply cleaning up after a binge of destruction?
Why Should We Care?
Greenwashing is all about misdirection. Taking our attention away from what’s going on, to make us feel safe so that we don’t ask questions.We still have a long, long way to go in the fight against the climate crisis. We need be at a point of proactive, not reactive environmental policy, so it’s essential that we spend more time uncovering and understanding the issues, than celebrating the solutions.This is not easy. We’re human, we want things to be okay so we’re easily appeased. But as green policy becomes an essential part of every business strategy, the green messages are coming. Our job, is to unpick them and ask ourselves:
‘does this company care more about advertising and marketing a green message to me than they do about minimising their environmental impact?’
Be Curious!
Other factors that should be setting off your greenwashing detector include:
⚠️ If sustainability is not in the business plan.
Businesses should be sustainable from the core.
⚠️ If it’s a trend or going to make them a lot of money.
Are their long-term environmental motivations in check?
⚠️ If it’s an overinflated claim.
‘100% ethical’, or ‘100% sustainable’ are not often a thing.
⚠️ If there are too many buzzwords.
Are they defining their terms and using facts?
- Check out Ethical Brand Directory’s Guide to Greenwashing for more indicators.
- Make Ethical Consumer Magazine’s boycott list your friend (or enemy) to avoid brands that do not have the earth’s interests at heart.
