The Rise Of Greenwashing

There is a growing culture of greenwashing amongst Irish brands who are eager to outwardly appear to be sustainable and ethical, while simultaneously using PR and media campaigns to do nothing more than increase their profit margins.

This taps into the growing wave of interest and fear at the impending climate crisis, and increasingly places the onus on the consumer to take action – despite the fact that these corporations have a carbon footprint many thousands of times larger than you or I.

While we have previously highlighted the greenwashing campaign launched by Applegreen, just a few short weeks later Maxol has followed suit in announcing that the emissions of their premium fuels will be “offset” in a similarly misleading initiative.

Greenwashing is misinformation

For context, these two companies made a combined profit of more than €3.1bn in 2019 – both reporting increases on the previous year.

It is worth bearing that figure in mind as you read the rest of this article, as the majority of those profits came from the same fossil fuels that are responsible for the breakdown of the climate and biodiversity, and which contribute to over 500,000 early and avoidable deaths across the EU each year. Yet they expect you to take action rather than them.

A 2018 study by Chalmers University of Technology found that the extraction, transport and refining of petrol and diesel accounted for as much as 40% of their total greenhouse emissions.

Yet this isn’t the only way that these campaigns are relying on misinformation to encourage consumers to spend more, or avoid taking meaningful climate action.

Hiding behind misconceptions

When consumers are paying to offset emissions, their money is used to fund projects which reduce greenhouse gas emissions – this could cover anything from restoring forests, to increasing the efficiency of buildings.

While this sounds like a great idea in essence, the truth is that it means nothing without reducing our emissions in the first place. This is analogous to an overflowing bath – while it’s possible to bail out some of the water into other vessels, you won’t fix the problem until you turn off the tap.

In fact, the EU will stop allowing offsets to be counted towards emissions reductions targets from 2021, after a 2017 study by the European Commission found that 85% of offsetting projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism had failed to reduce emissions.

This also overlooks that the premium diesel fuels promoted by Maxol and Applegreen will also have higher levels of nitrous oxide than their petrol counterparts – with N2O being 298 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 and can last in our atmosphere for over a century.

This is, then, an issue of accountability and transparency.

By not providing consumers with clear information about the full extent of their inaction, while simultaneously greenwashing and using the media to shout about their “sustainable” credentials, these brands are doing significantly more harm than good in the fight against the climate crisis.

The media too has a role to play in not simply printing press releases without questioning the validity of the claims these businesses, as consumers rely on the press to highlight these inconsistencies and to identify when the onus is wrongly being placed on the individual – rather than those with significant profits that could be diverted into actual climate action.

“No amount of PR can alter the basic fact that fossil fuels are fuelling global climate breakdown and now represent an existential threat to all life on Earth, including human life”

While Maxol and Applegreen certainly aren’t the only brands in Ireland who are actively engaged in greenwashing – the represent an industry that is responsible for considerable ecological and public health harm, and have the financial means to make a real difference.

“No amount of PR can alter the basic fact that fossil fuels are fuelling global climate breakdown and now represent an existential threat to all life on Earth, including human life. Self-serving efforts by the industry to ‘green’ their image gloss over this inescapable fact,” stated environmental commentator, John Gibbons, when speaking to IrishEVs.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018 called for the urgent phasing out of fossil fuel usage in order to avoid dangerous and irreversible climate disruption, which threatens the lives of billions of people globally. Already, air pollution primarily resulting from the burning of coal, peat and liquid fossil fuels kills an estimated four million people a year.

“For energy companies, promoting tree planting and offsetting is simply a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic”, Gibbons added. “What is needed is honesty and moral clarity on the part of these firms – after all, it’s in their own interests, since the rapid transition to EV technology threatens to leave companies wedded to fossil fuels as ‘stranded assets’ with no future as new technologies sweep them aside.”

Investing in zero emissions

Meanwhile, on a positive note, Sherry Communications has confirmed to IrishEVs that Maxol is planning to invest in electric car charging network in the years ahead: “As a service-focused business, we are focusing on the future and providing new energies to our service stations, from electric chargers to hydrogen pumps for heavy vehicles as demand grows”.

Maxol, which owns nearly 100 service stations in Ireland, currently has eight sites with EV charging facilities but plans to add another six in 2021.

At the time of publishing this article, Applegreen nor their PR agency Cullen Communications have not provided any information on their investment in EV charging or renewable energy, despite requests.