Bluewashing and greenwashing
While leaders of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) offices and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs deal with criticisms from the likes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Elon Musk, and Strive Asset Management’s Vivek Ramaswamy on the right, they are also faced with mounting pushback from activists and watchdog groups on the left who use terms such as greenwashing and bluewashing to express their concerns.
The term greenwashing has been around since 1986 when the New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld criticized the hotel industry’s emerging practice of putting notices in their rooms promoting the reuse of towels “to save the environment” while doing little or nothing themselves toward reducing energy use and waste. He asserted that the real objective was increased profits, and he labeled these kind of profitable-but-ineffective “environmentally conscientious” acts as greenwashing.
Since then, the term greenwashing has come to mean any kind of advertising or marketing in which “green” public relations or promotions are deceptively used to persuade the public that a company’s products, policies, and programs are environmentally friendly when they may be doing little to assist the environment in practice.
Examples of greenwashing include deceptive practices as:
· Claiming that a product is “green” based on a narrow set of attributes rather than looking at its larger environmental impact.
· Making a claim that is so poorly defined or broad that its meaning is likely to be misunderstood by the consumer.
· Shifting the blame from the company to the consumer (e.g., suggesting that the consumer should use less energy or recycle products more responsibly).
· Comparing apples with oranges, which can paint a true but misleading picture of a product or practice.
· Selectively picking one set of data or information that puts the company in a good light while ignoring information that doesn’t.
The same principles hold true for bluewashing, which is like greenwashing but focused more on social and economic responsibility rather than the environment.
The term bluewashing was first used to refer to companies who signed the United Nations Global Compact and its principles but did not make any actual policy reforms. Referring to the color of the United Nations flag, bluewashing came to mean that some participating companies were using the Global Compact to improve the public perception of their values, social programs, and governance practices without introducing any real changes or reforms.
Another example of bluewashing is using misinformation to deceive consumers into thinking that a company is more digitally ethical and secure than it really is. This kind of bluewashing is often achieved by companies making vague or unsubstantiated claims about their data privacy and security or making claims about the safety and security of artificial intelligence.
An unfortunate by-product of both greenwashing and bluewashing is that consumers and other stakeholders may become skeptical of a company’s claims of social responsibility, which makes the job of ESG and CSR professionals that much more difficult.
While the emergence of independent social audits and new government regulations may help ease some of these concerns, the pressure being asserted by politicians and certain investors on the right is starting to undermine the ability of companies to both do the right thing and to communicate to stakeholders about their plans and achievements.
For example, Ramaswamy is urging Apple to abandon its “racial equity audit” and to remove diversity considerations from its hiring and compensation policies. And he asserts that Disney has hurt its brand by speaking out against government policies that do not directly affect its business.
And, sounding much like activists and watchdog groups, Ramaswamy told The New York Times, “You can make the argument that companies have a social responsibility that goes above and beyond profits, but to retrofit ESG to say that it’s about long-term profit maximization, well, that glove doesn’t fit.”
