As we continue to see the momentum for Environmental and Social issues building within the business community, we see a great deal of focus on the “gotcha” moment by activists, stakeholders and the media to catch people greenwashing. If you’re not familiar with Greenwashing, its defined as “misleading or deceptive publicity disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image”. This definition has evolved over years, but, as more and more eyes are on organizations and their claims, we feel that greenwashing has now turned into Greenbashing. Greenbashing was noted in an article in 2009 by Shari Shapiro where it was targeting those bashing the green movement. In today’s world, we are repurposing it and defining Greenbashing as when people and/or organizations search for ways to call out companies for making environmental claims that may be slightly overstated or not clear.
Monitoring organizations for Greenwashing is healthy and can bring light to situations that are malicious in nature. And it is understandable that we as a society need to “self-police” sometimes and ensure that misinformation and efforts to deceive stakeholders purposefully are brought to light. But, as an ESG advisor, having spent hours and hours researching the ESG space and interviewing senior leaders and board members, I have found that environmental metrics are hard to align on at a global level, requirements for disclosure are often general and leave much room for error, and diversity and inclusion is continuing to evolve. As a result, people are now Greenhushing as they are more and more afraid of being Greenbashed.
Jason Jay, director of the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan states “This is not new,” he said. “Making claims ratchets up people’s expectations, expectations lead to greater scrutiny, that scrutiny can lead to a kind of gotcha phenomenon. If a side effect of setting a goal is that a bunch of people are yelling at [companies] from the outside for not getting there fast enough… that creates an incentive to be a little quieter.” As so many new leaders enter into the ESG space (jobs in the space are up 257% in the last 3 years) and more and more evolution on a global level continues, the chance that an organization will greenwash is very high. What we in the industry have to do is continue to educate, collaborate, and support new entrants into the field by taking the highroad.
As the world begins to see glimmers of hope that we are nearing the bottom of financial turbulence, more companies will begin to restart or begin their journeys toward a more inclusive and sustainable future. We as a leaders cannot continue to intimidate or castigate those who are actually trying to make an impact and may be out of alignment with the many changing regulations and targets. Lightwheel Advisors continue to help organizations of all sizes get started on their journey, and we hope other organizations will welcome more on the journey and make a greater impact for their stakeholders.
It must be enough for companies to make an effort and get support for learning and integrating ESG into their strategies and organizations. We, as professionals in the space, need to look to assist new entrants versus intimidating these new joiners and have them feel that being sustainable and inclusive is only for an exclusive few.
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