Greenwashing: strengthening your strategy to avoid greenwashing
As people around the world are becoming more cognizant about the importance of sustainability and how to incorporate it into daily habits. This is when some companies take delinquent advantages by overexaggerating and misrepresenting the environmental policies of a company.
From ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’, ESG practices have come a long way and should be adopted by every other company. The ‘greenwashing’ label in a company can deeply affect the relationship between the investors and the customers and can leave a huge negative impact on the company.
WHAT IS GREENWASHING?
Green washing is a process of conveying wrong and misleading information about the business’s environmental practices. Clothes labelled as ‘eco-friendly’, eggs labelled as ‘farm fresh’ when all these products are not exactly green and sustainable how it’s being portrayed by the brands. Some companies focus on spending their entire money and energy on marketing and labelling themselves as a green or sustainable company rather than focusing on actually becoming one and that’s when the problem of greenwashing arises.
Some of the big companies like conventional energy companies have renamed themselves as the champions of the planet by greenwashing their name and rebranding themselves so that their products can look more natural, sustainable and free from chemicals when actually they are not.
The most common source and media through which the companies rebrand themselves is advertisements and press releases. When a company won’t be making any relevant environmental initiatives it will still portray themselves as the most sustainable and environmentally friendly brand.
HOW TO STRENGTHEN YOUR STRATEGY AND AVOID GREENWASHING?
These are some ways by which you can avoid greenwashing and truly preserve the planet:
1. Be precise and reliable
Sometimes poor communication also leads to greenwashing when the company fails to connect with their customers in an understandable and relevant way. It’s important to be credible about your brand with accurate facts and figures. Portraying everything you do as “eco-friendly” would drown you into a river of loss in no time because then you will be unable to claim and make the customers fathom about the actual results.
It has become quite important now to make people understand why your products are better than the competitors and why it has the least impact on the environment because people often don’t take the word ‘greenwashing’ seriously and often end up considering it superficial. Catchy words and slogans are good but can be often confusing for the customers so it’s better to replace these words with simple and understandable ones so that the customers can get accurate information and the seed of trust is sown in them
2. Following a trend is not always a good option
From agencies to social media influencers to bloggers, everyone aims to follow the trend and work accordingly which sometimes becomes dangerous and could be easily carried away. Trends can sometimes be a skyrocketing option for your business or can drive you to a cluster of difficulties so keeping an analytical eye on the trends is important to be on the safer side.
Even when adopting different solutions and strategies, the core and main principle of the brand should be in one direction. Only a solution that fits your customer preferences, will thrive your business and market’s context should be taken into consideration. As trends keep changing continuously and in the most unpredictable ways, a proper strategic solution is a must.
3. Make a difference
Fighting the climate crisis and being sustainable is universal concern and it’s high time when everyone should put high efforts to fight the crisis. Whenever we think of forming new habits, we must know the importance and when it comes to sustainable habits then one should not think of it as work, people should make it a normal routine in their daily life. Recycling and proper utilisation of resources should be incorporated in daily activities.
Making sustainable habits a top priority in your office like using reusable cups, decreasing the usage of printers and turning off the lights whenever not in use. A true initiative and action for the environment includes your energy, resources and time. There are numerous ways by which you can make an impact like resign the product so that all units can fit in one box or work on your upcycle packaging ideas.
4. A scientific approach
Last but not the least step is to curb the efforts that you are making for the environment and are they effective enough or not because when you make certain efforts it’s important to know that are they impactful enough, if not then you can change your way of making efforts. An estimate for your initial environmental footprint can help you in identifying the parts where improvements are needed then you can get effective results for the same.
By doing LCA (Life Cycle Analysis), comparison should be done between the standard equivalent and the new version, while the sustainable features get introduced. By doing this, the guesswork can be avoided and you can focus on doing the actual decision-making, your hard data will eventually help you in the right direction and will have a solid environmental base.
