Greenwashing and its Ties with Performative Activism

Greenwashing is a buzzword frequently thrown around in today's society yet it can be unclear on what it entails. Greenwashing is when a company makes over-exaggerated or rhetorically deceptive claims about a product’s environmental effect. This can be in the form of using words such as “sustainable” or advertising using better production practices that may potentially have alternate hidden environmental effects. One specific example is Royal Dutch Shell which claims to be committed towards working towards global net-zero emissions yet has invested miniscule amounts into its transition towards renewable energy. It is through the use of misleading rhetoric that consumers wrongly believe they are reducing the environmental impacts of their everyday consumption. Since the use of “green language” is a marketing practice, its only aim is to increase the consumption of a product. Due to the climate crisis being a highly discussed topic in recent years, some companies that may be seen as inherently unsustainable are adapting by changing their marketing- not their practices. It is this method of deception that I believe fits very well into performative activism surrounding the climate crisis. It is this idea that instead of making radical changes to the systems that have led us to this dire position, the root of the problem can be ignored as long as small, sometimes non-effective measures are taken. Large polluting companies themselves have been the ones to convince the public that the personal lifestyle of the average person is to blame for climate change. While individual consumption is a factor, especially in high consuming/high polluting countries, changes made to the overall products that we consume would have a much greater effect. By continuing to greenwash environmentally detrimental products, consumers are prompted to buy unsustainable products under the guise that their individual changes will have a great impact. It is a cycle of deception. If high polluting companies truly adhered to the grand environmental claims they made, maybe the mass consumption of those products would make a bit of difference; however, that is not the case. The promotion of ideas such as “not using a plastic straw” or “taking shorter showers” have the potential to distract from the larger statistics, such as the main cause of waste in the Pacific Ocean being large scale fishing equipment. All this being said, reducing your consumption as an individual and opting for truly sustainable alternatives will not have any negative side effects. By completely abandoning the idea of individual action, unethical consumption will continue to rise. However, without the reduction of the continual rhetorical deception of the more powerful global stakeholders and companies, real progress will become nearly impossible.