AXA Ireland Epitomises Greenwashing

Ireland has a major problem with greenwashing, particularly with the number of corporations using tree planting and so-called ‘offsetting’ as a way to shirk their responsibilities and garner positive PR without actually doing anything to address their role in the Climate and Biodiversity Crises.

It has been clear for years that offsetting is wholly ineffectual, with numerous studies demonstrating that it doesn’t work as a climate action strategy, and that it only has a minor merit only when coupled with actually reducing emissions in the first place.

Over the last few years we have seen the Climate Crisis intensify at an alarming rate, both at home and abroad.

In 2022 alone, major fires burned more than 2,982 hectares across Ireland according to the European Forest Fire Information Service.

These fires reiterate further that tree planting by corporations is not a viable climate action strategy, as they too are vulnerable to being wiped out by Climate Crisis-caused fires in the coming years.

If further proof were needed, we only need to look to Spain, where a carbon offsetting business recently started a wildfire that destroyed tens of thousands of acres.

Which is why it is so troubling to see corporations like AXA Ireland doubling down misleading greenwashing campaigns, like its ‘Carbon Neutral Car Insurance’ initiative.

Planting Seeds of Misdirection

AXA Ireland’s campaign claimed that, from September 2021, it would offset the emissions created by its customers’ cars by collaborating with The Nature Trust to plant 600,000 native trees across Ireland.

However, almost a year after the launch of the campaign, The Nature Trust confirmed to IrishEVs that a total of just 90,000 trees had actually been planted. That’s around 15% of the amount that AXA Ireland claimed was necessary to offset its customer’s emissions – and which it had promised to plant before the end of August 2022.

Furthermore, The Nature Trust confirmed to IrishEVs that the native trees are both bareroot and typically around 3 years old. This is important for two reasons: Firstly, bareroot trees have a very short planting period when the plants are dormant, so it is likely to take years for AXA Ireland to hit the 600,000 trees target that it promised its customers.

Secondly, the trees are so far from maturity that it will take decades for them to reach their true CO2 absorption capacity. The Nature Trust confirmed that the native trees include Oak, Alder, Birch, Holly and Hazel – which take an average of 30 years to reach maturity.

And AXA Ireland must be aware of this – aware of how they are misleading Irish consumers – as their partner The Nature Trust had this information available to them when we enquired.

It is clear, then, that AXA Ireland is failing to hit its tree planting targets, misleading consumers about the amount of carbon dioxide that the trees they’re planting can capture, and therefore its campaign amounts to nothing but greenwashing.

This is a corporation directly profiting from an improved public reputation, trading on a false ‘green’ image while doing nothing to actually help reduce emissions.

Can’t See The Lies For The Trees

We contacted Gordon MRM – the PR agency employed by AXA Ireland – to address the concerns raised above about AXA Ireland failing to meet its commitments to plant the promised quota of trees, and were surprised by their response.

“It is important to emphasise that the native tree planting in Ireland is a complimentary initiative to the more substantial Carbon Neutral Car Insurance initiative and AXA does not attribute any carbon offset to it,” said a spokesperson from Gordon MRM.

However, this claim is directly at odds with many elements of AXA’s campaign.

At the very least, AXA Ireland and Gordon MRM have profited from how deliberately opaque their campaign is – making it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for the average person to discern just how their ‘carbon neutral’ car insurance will be achieved.

Hell, it’s taken over a year of work for us to find the truth behind this – they know that the average person doesn’t have the time in their day to question what they hope is a campaign run in good faith, and they trade on this to promote their greenwashing.

We can see this again in a piece of RTÉ coverage from August 2021, which reported that tree planting was fundamental to the campaign – something that both AXA Ireland and Gordon MRM had a responsibility to rectify, as they knew it to be untrue. Yet they have failed to do so.

However, this was the aim of having such an obscure campaign – to profit from positive PR that had no real world grounding. In fact, their efforts may well have delayed thousands of drivers in Ireland from making the switch to an electric car, thinking that their fossil fuel vehicle was now ‘clean’ and ‘green’.

This has huge implications not only for the Climate Crisis but also for public health. This is the inherent harm of greenwashing.

Gordon MRM are as responsible for misleading AXA’s customers and the harm that this campaign has caused as AXA are – and their responses to our questions demonstrated that they did not take this seriously, often failing to address the questions that we asked and instead favouring self-promotion and marketing speak.

Certainly, if this campaign “demonstrates the seriousness with which the corporate world is now beginning to address the climate and biodiversity crisis” then it clearly demonstrates that they are not taking it seriously at all.

We contacted Minister Hackett’s office, sharing the information provided by The Nature Trust that AXA Ireland is far from delivering on its promises and asking why the Minister would so tacitly endorse an offsetting campaign given the volume of academic data that shows they are wholly ineffectual.

They did not respond to our enquiry.

Carbon Offsetting Greenwashing

Alongside planting immature forests here in Ireland that will take up to 50 years to act as an effective carbon sink, AXA also claimed it was working with Ecologi to find projects around the world to ‘offset’ the emissions of its customers’ cars.

However, there are considerable issues with those projects that also need to be brought to light – particularly its project to cap landfills in Brazil to capture the gases they emit in order to produce electricity.

One of the two landfills that AXA claims is central to its ‘offsetting’ programme is expected to be operational until at least 2028 – meaning that, for this project to work, a vast amount of new waste needs to be generated and dumped here to produce the amount of methane needed to produce the energy claimed by Ecologi.

Yes, this carbon dioxide would have been given off if the landfill hadn’t been covered to deliberately increase methane production, and we are gaining energy from it, but this is not carbon neutral by any means.

At best, this is the equivalent of switching from high tar- to low tar-cigarettes – you’re just slightly changing the timeline you’re doing the same amount of damage over.

Furthermore, this approach of deliberately creating methane from landfills also creates the potential that vast quantities could leak into the atmosphere and cause considerably more damage over a longer time period than would otherwise have occurred.

This is perfectly summed up by Peter Anderson, President of RecycleWorlds Consulting in an interview with Waste Drive: “The bottom line is, landfill gas-to-energy is hijacking concern for climate change – for a technology and process that actually makes the climate condition substantially worse.”

And, again, this perpetuates the creation of new waste to supply the ‘fuel’ needed to create the gas, keeping us in the deadly cycle of consumption and pollution.

Greenwashing Regulation

Once again, this campaign demonstrates just how rampant greenwashing has become in Ireland – and how badly we need regulation to avoid consumers being lied to and ripped off; and to stop corporations profiting from deception and inaction.

We contacted both the Irish and British Advertising Standards Agencies to flag the obvious greenwashing of the campaign, but neither saw fit to take action. This is to be expected when the Irish Advertising Standards Authority is comprised of advertisers – see our article on them for more detail.

We have been in contact with a number of TDs and Senators to push for a regulatory framework on greenwashing, following the principles that France and the Netherlands have implemented.

Only through such policies can we be certain that corporations will be held accountable and the people of Ireland won’t be misled.

Time is too short to allow corporations to continue capitalising from worsening the Climate Crisis and harming human health. AXA Ireland is just one of a great number greenwashing on a daily basis with no intent but to profit from delaying real action – at great cost to us all.

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