Greenwashing as a Strategic Marketing Strategy
You’re shuffling through the racks for the recent collection at the usual clothing store that you go to when you need an inexpensive boundary-less outfit on the fly. You spot a blank tee with a cardboard tag attached with a safety pin that reads, “Wash this eco-garment gently.” Maybe there are some logos underneath that describe how to properly wash and care for the item to maximize its lifetime.
A week later you go back to the same fast fashion producing clothing store to find another fit for the event you were recently invited to attend. Upon walking in, you notice racks upon racks of the same blank tees…but now splattered in icons and logos that insinuate recycling to be some sort of an elitist cult. What’s the initiation or haze performance you ask?
Buy the shirt then wear it on your grocery shopping adventures. Maybe take some pictures for social media in lieu of actually wearing sustainable clothing.
This is the greenwashing marketing strategy.
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So what is greenwashing? It is a hyperactive and aggressive approach of promoting a green lifestyle or using non-profit and charitable companies as bait to allow people to feel a sense of guilt for their “non-eco-friendly” purchasing habits through fast fashion retailers. Aesthetics play an enormous role in the success that corporate powerhouses have when they start to greenwash their products.
Department stores and supply chains like Target offer both sides of the spectrum. The home essentials company, Seventh Generation, releases innovative and efficient products with the Earth in mind, while other Target-owned companies like A New Day and Wild Fable are constantly producing greater quantities of merchandise without much consideration of their bio/carbon impact.
Greenwashing makes its debut in numerous well dressed fashions.
Companies use green-labeling as an industry marketing tactic. Greenwashing includes misinforming potential buyers of product efficacy based upon the evidence and reviews of other buyers (bias) and taking one natural ingredient from the list and using it to portray false sustainability within the overall product. Companies might also use greenwashing to create ludicrous and unwarranted claims about the wholeness and environmental friendliness of their products.
However, greenwashing does not only exist within product labels. As forementioned, it is a tactic used frequently amongst corporate powerhouses. Banks use financial greenwashing to send emails to their clients about the environmental impacts of enrolling in autopay or checking off your paperless notification settings in effort of converting your “paper trail” into a completely electronic platform.
