KEY POINTS:
If Genghis Khan himself went green, how would you know if he was genuine or if it was just a ruse to get an invitation to raze your village?
It's this kind of dilemma consumers face every day as businesses everywhere go green and sustainable. Are they telling the truth, and if so how do you know it's for real?
"Greenwashing" is the name given to those businesses that pose as environmentally friendly, but don't make a genuine change. It also means genuine businesses find it harder to convince a sceptical public they are doing the right thing.
Climate change fears have become so mainstream that the one-time scourge of the left wing, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, is vowing to make his News Ltd empire carbon neutral by 2010.
And Carmen Gravatt, Greenpeace's campaigns manager for Aotearoa/ New Zealand, says people are often not as naive as some businesses think.
"Greenwashing is generally a risk, people are not as easily fooled as some people will believe," she says.
State-owned Genesis Energy, which runs the Huntly power station, a "classic example of greenwashing", since it has no desire to change practices but tries to imply it is doing something good, says Gravatt.
By putting windmills on its billboards and using "broad language" and pukekos in its recent TV advertising, Genesis was trying to infer that using a diverse range of power sources "is somehow good for the environment, when the vast bulk of their energy comes from climate-changing fossil fuels", she claims.
"There's a real need for people to be truthful," says Gravatt. "It's not just the market driving the need to talk about sustainability, it's also real environmental problems driving that.
"We need to make sure we're moving for the market's sake, but also because the environment requires it."
Gravatt says one way for consumers to ascertain whether a company is the real deal is to look for a credible or reputable partner to the business. "One of the easiest ways to see if something is good or not is to see if someone else is buying into it."
Richard Gordon, spokesman for Genesis, rejects any suggestion its TV campaign featuring pukekos is "greenwashing" and says the company is open about Huntly.
"It [the criticism] is not valid - the ad is all about diversity... it doesn't ever talk about sustainability, it doesn't talk about environmental management, it's all about diversity and not putting all your eggs into one basket. That's the whole point of the ad. It's a commercial message, not an environmental message - they have totally misread it.
"We're not getting into this greenwashing thing, we've been up front about Huntly, there's not much we can do about it in the short term.
"The reason we used a bird was that, in television advertising, you look to present a story that viewers can relate to and engage with."
Peter Neilson, chief executive of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, says while only a small percentage of people are prepared to pay more for an environmentally sustainable product, most still want it to meet environmental standards.
He says: "People are looking for credibility - you effectively make a promise to the consumer. And people want to believe it's true. Why should they believe you?
"When Rupert Murdoch turns up doing this, you know two things - one that the customers have moved quite dramatically and realise this is the right thing to do. It also means it doesn't have a downside, that it's a positive in terms of sales.
"Why has he moved? The reality is the public has moved and there's a dollar in it but the substance has to follow through."
Neilson cites the case of Auckland schoolgirls exposing Ribena's misleading vitamin claims as an example of how companies can be humbled by consumers. "You are in a 24/7 world in which everyone is a potential reporter. Greenwash basically ain't got much mileage in it. You basically just set yourself up for a disaster."
Candice Collier, corporate respon- sibility manager for Westpac NZ, says some of the ideas for the bank to become more sustainable have come from its stakeholders, including customers and staff. Its advertising and marketing do not include a lot of big environmental or sustainability claims.
"We don't tend to go out beating our chests too much," says Collier. "But times are changing, people do want to start hearing about it."
She says the idea is people come across the bank's sustainability and corporate responsibility practices through their everyday dealings, rather than an ad or marketing campaign.
"The more we integrate that and embed it in our organisation, that will come through naturally as opposed to forcing an opinion."
Philip Mattera, head of international non-profit group the Corporate Research Project, wrote about green-washing this week at TomPaine.com.
"This may turn out to be the year big business bought a substantial part of the environmental movement," he says. "What was once an arena of fierce antagonism has become a veritable love fest as companies profess to be going green and get lavishly honoured for doing so."
He wonders whether environmentalists may have been duped into "endorsing what may be little more than a new wave of corporate greenwash".
An example of greenwash cited by Mattera is TV ads showing sea lions applauding a passing oil tanker to celebrate Conoco's move to use double-hulled ships - despite Conoco being one of the last oil companies in the world to do so.
Why do corporates resist environmental moves for so long if it is so good for the bottom line? asks Mattera. "Either corporations are fooling themselves, in which case they will eventually realise there is no environmental free lunch, and renege on their green promises, or they are fooling us and are perpetrating a massive public relations hoax.
"A third interpretation is that companies are taking voluntary steps that are genuine but inadequate to solve the problems at hand, and are mainly meant to prevent stricter, enforceable regulation.
"Already there are hints that business views itself, not activist groups, as the real green vanguard."
