Jay Westerveld coined the term “greenwashing” in 1986 after noticing that hotels encouraging towel reuse to “protect coral reefs” were simultaneously expanding their properties in ways that demonstrably harmed those reefs. The gap between message and practice was the problem then. It’s still the problem now, scaled to the full retail sector.
The FTC has published Green Guides specifically to define what environmental marketing claims require to be substantiated. Most brands haven’t read them.
The Patterns That Repeat
Greenwashing rarely involves outright lies. The more common patterns are harder to prosecute but equally misleading.
The hidden tradeoff is the most frequent: a product marketed as “sustainable” based on one improved attribute while other significant harms are obscured. “Made from recycled content” on packaging that still uses excessive plastic fill. “Cage-free” eggs from hens kept in crowded indoor pens rather than cages: technically true, practically misleading.
Unsubstantiated vague claims (“eco-friendly,” “green,” “natural,” “sustainable”) are regulated under the FTC Green Guides, which require that environmental claims be specific, qualified when necessary, and not likely to mislead a reasonable consumer. Companies using these terms without specific supporting data are making claims that could trigger regulatory scrutiny as regulators in the US, UK, and EU tighten enforcement.
The carbon offset proxy is a particularly common corporate greenwashing pattern: a company continues growing its total emissions while purchasing carbon credits and marketing itself as carbon neutral. Offsets are not equivalent to emissions reductions. Using them as a substitute for operational change is misleading to investors and customers who understand what they’re supposed to mean.
Greenwashing isn’t always dishonesty — sometimes it’s marketing moving faster than operations, or a sustainability team without the power to change what they’re communicating about. The fix requires the same thing: connecting the message to the actual practice.
The Internal Version
Most greenwashing analysis focuses on how consumers are misled. The more actionable framing for sustainability practitioners is the internal version: setting sustainability targets that are easy to meet, reporting metrics that make the company look good rather than revealing actual impact, and making public commitments without the operational changes to fulfill them.
A sustainability commitment that can be met without changing any purchasing decisions, supplier contracts, or operational processes isn’t a commitment. It’s a communications exercise. This matters for two reasons: it misleads stakeholders, and it doesn’t actually help.
The test: would your sustainability claims hold up if a journalist requested your underlying data? Companies that have answered yes to that question consistently are the ones that have embedded accountability into their measurement process rather than designing their measurement process to produce favorable results.
Building Credibility Instead of Claims
Third-party certification is the most reliable signal because it decouples the claim from the claimant. Certifications from organizations with published standards, independent auditing, and public accountability (FSC for forestry, GOTS for organic textiles, GRS for recycled content, Cradle to Cradle for full life-cycle assessment, Fair Trade Certified for supply chain labor) are verifiably different from a brand’s own sustainability marketing.
The other credibility-building move is transparency about gaps. Patagonia publishes supply chain footprint data including categories where they fall short of their own goals. Interface publishes its progress toward net-zero manufacturing with specific data on where they are and aren’t on track. This kind of honest reporting is uncomfortable and also the single clearest signal that a company is measuring honestly rather than managing its image.
P.S. The FTC Green Guides are free to download and worth reading before publishing any environmental claim. The standard is “specific, verifiable, and not likely to mislead a reasonable consumer,” and most current sustainability marketing doesn’t meet all three criteria.