Irish Greenwashing Awards 2022

The Irish Greenwashing Awards 2022 is an award ceremony dedicated to acknowledging outstanding misinformation about the Climate Crisis In Ireland.

The Awards bring together the biggest names in spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt at a time when we urgently need climate action, and also acknowledge those brands and publications who are dedicated to making a profit from promoting climate crisis denial.

The awards, which are organised by consumer advice website IrishEVs.com, aim to raise awareness of the ticking clock on the Climate Crisis, and how the efforts of Irish corporations and politicians are having a detrimental effect on cutting emissions, meeting climate targets, and the dire consequences for public health.

Tom Spencer, Editor of IrishEVs, said: “While it has never been clearer that we urgently need to cut emissions to avert the worst outcomes of the Climate Crisis, we have seen an alarming increase in greenwashing over the past year.”

“Many of the brands, publications and politicians recognised by the Irish Greenwashing Awards are directly profiting from sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt about the Climate Crisis – delaying action so that they can increase their income. This is worsening the poverty gap in Ireland, and raising the cost of living.”

At present, over 1,300 people die in Ireland each year due to air pollution, but more than 5 million annual deaths worldwide can be attributed directly to the Climate Crisis – a number that is rising year on year.

Meanwhile, more than 1.2bn face being displaced by 2050, and one third of all species of animal and plant life are threatened with extinction by 2070 as a direct consequence of the Climate Crisis.

Furthermore, the European Commission has recently warned the Irish Government that it has one of the worst records on restricting legal freedoms around climate action – being the most expensive member state in which to make an environmental claim before the courts, and notable for its “increasingly aggressive stance being taken against environmental campaigners – like threatening to cut off funding to certain NGOs”.

This political inaction is putting our nation, our people and our public health in jeopardy, and consigning millions of people around the world to death as the Climate Crisis worsens. Mr Martin and his Government must realise that they cannot buy their way out of this crisis, it requires a wholesale change in Irish society, economics and politics.

From their promotion of entirely fossil fuel reliant ‘self-charging hybrids’ as a green option, to passing off opinion surveys as fact, and paying UCD to conduct bogus research to substantiate their lies about hybrid vehicles, Toyota really have gone above and beyond.

The fact that Toyota Ireland has managed to avoid their ‘self-charging hybrid’ deception from being banned here – as it has been in many other countries – is a testament to the levels of creativity and dedication to greenwashing that they have put in this year.

This is just one of many failures from RTE to address the promotion of greenwashing and climate denial, which is why there can be no more deserving winner than RTE News and Jon Williams in this category.

Of course, there can be no more deserving winner than The Irish Times, for their consistent prioritising of climate misinformation, disinformation and greenwashing across almost every section of the publication.

From giving voice to disinformation groups like ICCRA without any balance, to running greenwashing ‘sustainability’ content sponsored by Land Rover, and publishing stories such as “Could Ireland be a winner from climate change”, The Irish Times really has gone above and beyond to deceive the Irish public in this past year.

And that doesn’t even include the fact that they removed the Climate section from their homepage in order to promote Six Nations coverage.

Huge congratulations to them for really suppressing facts about the Climate Crisis in a way that no other publication has achieved this year.

From lying to the public about ‘carbon-neutral’ premium fuels which cost members of the public but don’t do anything to aid the Climate Crisis, to running a schools program on biodiversity to confuse children and avoid scrutiny of the role of fossil fuels in worsening the destruction of this planet, Applegreen really has done it all.

And Cullen Communications has been there every step of the way to ensure that as many people as possible are left as confused as possible, so that Applegreen may delay climate action and increase its profits. Huge congratulations to them on this well-deserved award.

Their continued promotion of ‘carbon neutral’ premium fuels really is a great example of the lengths they are going to in order to make the Irish public spend more money while guilt tripping them into absolutely meaningless ‘climate action’.

Nowhere have they mentioned that it will take up to 35 years for their offsetting scheme to capture the emissions they are creating, and nor do they mention that they only ‘offset’ a fraction of the total emissions of their fuels. Even then, we all know that carbon offsetting doesn’t work anyway.

Our sincere congratulations to Applegreen and their PR agency for winning two awards this year.

While telling people to wash at lower temperatures in order to reduce energy usage and CO2 emissions, they are also encouraging users of Ariel products to overlook vast amount of microplastic waste generated by their washing pods.

Let us not forget that foetuses are now infected with microplastics before birth.

Kudos to Ariel for their creative deception.

From lobbying the government to delay emissions reductions target by a decade, to consistently promoting false information in the Irish press, ICCRA really has done it all.

What has really set ICCRA apart from the rest is their E-Way 2040 misinformation campaign, which uses greenwashing and disinformation to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst the Irish population, by lying to them about vehicle emissions and electric cars in order to increase their profit margins up to 2040.

Their dedication to greenwashing can be seen in the expense that they went to in hiring Weber Shandwick Dublin to promote this campaign in the Irish press and on social media – and in their attempts to pay academics to validate their misleading campaign.

Our congratulations to Denis and ICCRA for setting the precedent for the most flagrant greenwashing in Ireland.

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