Second Annual Irish Greenwashing Awards Highlight Need For Consumer Protection

Consumer advice website IrishEVs has held their second annual Irish Greenwashing Awards, which are designed to draw attention to the brands and organisations that are the worst offenders 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’.

Launched in 2022, 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.

Tom Spencer, Editor of IrishEVs said: “As the Climate Crisis worsens, we are seeing an increasing number of companies and organisations pivot to greenwashing rather than making a concerted effort to take action to cut their carbon footprint.”

“In many cases, Irish consumers are being sold a product or service at an increase cost under the guise that it is in someway ‘greener’, but in reality many companies are just profiting from highly-convincing deception. We urgently need legislation to tackle the rise in greenwashing and protect Irish consumers from this alarming rise in misinformation that is costing them money during a cost-of-living crisis, while also worsening the Climate Crisis.”

The winners of this year’s Irish Greenwashing Awards included AXA Ireland, Applegreen and Coillte.

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.

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