Irish Greenwashing Awards 2023 Announced

The second annual Irish Greenwashing Awards are set to take place on Thursday 4th May, drawing attention to the brands and organisations that are the worst offenders in Ireland for misleading the public with their ‘green’ claims.

The term greenwashing is used to describe false, misleading or untrue promises made by an organisation which have been designed to help them have a greener public image, without anything substantial to back up those claims.

Often this can take the form of placing the onus for change on the consumer, with sustainable products carrying a higher price – despite the fact that the consumer’s carbon footprint is just a fraction of that corporation’s.

Launched in 2021, the Irish Greenwashing Awards are designed to draw attention to the growing issue of greenwashing in Ireland, with campaigners stating that greenwashing allows companies to delay meaningful action on their greenhouse gas emissions, and even increase their income by improving their image.

This year’s awards will take place on the IrishEVs Twitter account at 6pm on Thursday 4th May, with the nominees due to be announced on Monday 1st May, in the build-up to the main event.

Tom Spencer, Editor of IrishEVs, said: “We’ve been inundated with examples of greenwashing from our readers, and there has been a noticeable increase in the prevalence of greenwashing in the past 12 months.”

“The aim of the Irish Greenwashing Awards is not only to show how frequently companies are lying about their ‘green’ credentials, but also to call for specific greenwashing legislation to protect Irish consumers from those brands and organisations that are profiting from this misinformation.”

Last year’s winners included Toyota Ireland, The Irish Times, ICCRA and Applegreen.

In November 2022, UN Secretary General, António Guterres, issued a warning that the increase in greenwashing not only misleads the public but also weakens net-zero pledges, leading to a lower likelihood of meeting the 1.5°C target set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.

He said: “A growing number of governments and non-state actors are pledging to be carbon-free – and obviously that’s good news. The problem is that the criteria and benchmarks for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of rigor and loopholes wide enough to drive a diesel truck through. We must have zero tolerance for net-zero greenwashing.”

Ireland has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030, but has repeatedly missed the targets that it has set in recent years. In February 2023, Eurostat reported that Ireland had the highest increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the EU in the third quarter of 2022, while Government is three years past the EU deadline to submit its long-term climate strategy.

The winners of last year’s Irish Greenwashing Awards can be found here.

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