Tag Archives: landfill

3 Telltale Signs You’re Being Greenwashed

by Tabatha0432 Posted on July 12, 2018

Back in the 1980s, notorious oil company Chevron put out a series of ads designed to distract from its dubious sustainability?record and convince the public that it was, in fact, pro-environment. While the commercials were very effective advertising (they won an Effie award), they also became a hot topic among environmentalists, who have dubbed them among the worst of greenwashing.

It’s not uncommon for massive corporations like Chevron, BP?or Nestle to “greenwash” their?businesses in order to make them?appear more environmentally responsible than they actually are.?Sometimes it’s apparent ? a slick, expensive ad that pops up in the face of some public relations scandal; sometimes it’s a little more subtle ? overblown claims on the side of a plastic disposable water bottle.

Here are three telltale signs you’re being greenwashed.

#1:?Misinformation

The most common greenwashing strategy, according to Greenpeace’s Stop Greenwash group, is when a company promotes an environmental product or program while its core business is inherently polluting or unsustainable. A great example of this is bottled water.

Bottle water companies rely heavily on images of pristine mountain lakes to sell their products. At the same time, only 31 percent of plastic water bottles end up getting recycled, which means that this so called “most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world” is actually sending millions of tons of garbage to landfill (or the ocean) every year. Gross.

#2: Misdirection

This greenwashing strategy is intended to shift customer focus from destructive?behavior to something that’s much more peripheral. Many?would call this propaganda. It often shows up in the face of scandal.

Remember the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill? BP immediately turned to?green advertising to ward off critique. And you know what? It worked. According to this Harvard Business Review case study, customers temporarily “punished” BP immediately following?the spill, but let them off the hook once those advertisements?started airing.

#3: Misrepresentation

This last form of greenwashing is a little bit more subtle. It’s not uncommon for companies with an iffy environmental track record to brag about sustainable changes?when, in reality, those changes were mandated by law.

If an industry or specific company has been forced to change its practices, clean up an area of business or act on behalf of an endangered species, for example, they may try to pass it off as proactive ? their idea.

Does this?make you uncomfortable?

The best way to guard against greenwashing is to be informed. Look beyond advertising claims ? way beyond ? and?educate yourself on which?practices are sustainable and which?aren’t. In the meantime, here are a few resources and contacts who are already looking out for greenwashing:

CorpWatch
Greenpeace Stop Greenwash
Ecolabel Index

Related Stories:

8 Scary Cleaning Chemicals to Avoid
Is SimpleGreen Actually Green?
95% of Eco-Products Commit Greenwashing Sins

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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3 Telltale Signs You’re Being Greenwashed

Posted in alo, bigo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 3 Telltale Signs You’re Being Greenwashed

Activists wanted to clean up a coal ash dump. Dump sued activists for complaining.

by Fanpepsi Posted on June 3, 2016

talkin’ trash

Activists wanted to clean up a coal ash dump. Dump sued activists for complaining.

By on Jun 2, 2016Share

Four residents of a tiny Alabama town are fighting back against a giant landfill operator after the Georgia-based company, Green Group, filed a $30 million defamation suit against them. The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court to dismiss the suit on Thursday.

Green Group operates a toxic coal ash dump in Uniontown, Ala., a small, mostly black community where half the residents live below the poverty line. The Arrowhead landfill draws coal ash — the sludge left by burning coal — from across the country. Opposition to the landfill gained strength after waste from the largest coal ash spill in U.S. history was dumped in Uniontown. In total, Arrowhead takes up to 15,000 tons of toxic waste from 33 other states every day.

Three years ago, members of a group called Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice and other residents filed a civil rights complaint with the EPA against the Alabama Department of Environmental Protection (ADEM), the state agency that oversees the landfill. The complaint against ADEM says that dust from the dump gets into homes and on cars and causes serious health problems. Three years later, the agency is still investigating.

Black Belt Citizens operates a Facebook group where residents talk about the town’s toxic sites — the landfill, as well as the sewage overflow and massive cheese processing plant. The landfill sits on a former slave plantation, and borders a historic black cemetery.

After residents filed the civil-rights complaint, Green Group approached four members of Black Belt with a settlement offer. To avoid a lawsuit, Mary Schaeffer, Ellis Long, Benjamin Eaton, and Esther Calhoun needed to remove their names from the EPA complaint, retract all their statements about the landfill, then pin that retraction to the group’s Facebook page for two years. The agreement would have given Green Group the right to look through their phones and laptops for text messages and emails.

The four refused, and were slapped with a defamation suit for what they said online. They’re now represented by the ACLU.

“State officials would never have allowed the landfill to be here if we were a rich, white neighborhood,” said Esther Calhoun, president of Black Belt Citizens, in a statement from the ACLU. “They put it here because we’re a poor, Black community and they thought we wouldn’t fight back. But we are fighting back and we’re not afraid to make our voices heard.”

The legacy of racism and enslavement compound the environmental injustice that Uniontown faces today. Once a plantation, now a toxic landfill, where silence is expected and modest objection —  even simple Facebook posts — leads to ludicrous lawsuits.

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Activists wanted to clean up a coal ash dump. Dump sued activists for complaining.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Activists wanted to clean up a coal ash dump. Dump sued activists for complaining.