The Greenwash Brigade

The Greenwash Brigade is a group of four environmental professionals who look for greenwashing by companies, governments and other groups and publish their findings on PublicRadio.org. Greenwashing is the practice of making false environmental claims. The Greenwash Brigade is a part of American Public Media's Public Insight Network, which is a network of more than 70,000 self nominated people across the world with particular areas of expertise who volunteer to fact check public radio news stories.

They have recently published Greenwashes of the Year 2008 and here are some of their findings:

• Fiji Water's new green campaign. Greenwash Brigade member Heidi Siegelbaum found that Fiji Water's 'Every Drop is Green' claim to be prime greenwashing. To ship their bottles of water to Los Angeles (the closest Fiji Water destination point in the US) it is 5,500 miles per trip. She finds the carbon footprint of that company's operations per year to be:
  • 46 million gallons of fossil fuel
  • 1.3 billion gallons of water
  • 216 million pounds of greenhouse gases

• The three US automaker CEOs driving hybrid cars to Washington, DC. Using the TerraPass travel calculator, Greenwash Brigade member Janne Flisrand did a quick round-trip calculation of a first-class ticket on Northwest Airlines from Detroit to DC and a 35 mpg hybrid. Fiscally and environmentally, it would have been better to fly a commercial airline — even first class — than drive, because who wants to pay their CEO to spend two days driving to and from meetings? 

• Clean Coal. Three of the four Greenwash Brigade members find all the news and talk about clean coal to be preposterous. Burning coal is the leading source of global warming emissions in the world, and new carbon sequestration technology, which has been the subject of considerable research and analysis, has yet to be demonstrated in the form of commercial-scale, fully integrated projects at coal-fired power plants.

• A greener Apple computer company. Greenwash Brigade member Jim Nicolow maintains that despite previous commitments to phase out the use of these chemicals by year's end, it appears that Apple Computers' latest 3G iPhones contain polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFR). Sony Ericsson and Nokia in the meantime have PVC & BFR-free product lines.

• Beyond Petroleum. British Petroleum is answering public demand to move to a post-fossil-fuel economy with their 'Beyond Petroleum'ad campaign. Greenwash Brigade members Jim Nicolow and Dennis Markatos-Soriano find that BP's advertising message has images of wind turbines and solar technology, while 97% of their investment is still in oil and coal.

It is lovely to see non-commercial fact checking of major environmental claims out there. Hopefully, it can help us make better purchases both personally and for our nonprofit organizations.