Why Companies Need to Greenwash - YouTube

In 1985, one company decided to profit off of the  environmental fervor that had pervaded the 70s.  

They ran a series of ads like this one. The  ads were part of the “People Do” campaign,  

which highlighted how workers were changing  landscapes to aid local wildlife. The campaign  

was such a success that it ran well into the  1990s, and the advertisements even won an Effie  

advertising award for green eco-marketing in 1991.  But these commercials had a sinister purpose. One  

that masked the environmental pollution  and destruction of the company that made  

them. Today, we’re going to unpack so-called  corporate responsibility and greenwashing:  

what it means, how commercials and tactics  like the “People Do” campaign work,  

and why corporations like the one that made those  commercials don’t care about us or the planet.

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What Companies Claim 

The late 1980s weren’t a good time for Chevron’s  environmental track record. In 1985, one of the  

company’s refineries had just been exposed for  contaminating the local groundwater with millions  

of barrels of oil leaks. Then three years later,  the company paid $550,000 to settle a lawsuit  

brought in connection with toxic emissions at its  plant in Richmond, Virginia. Then again in 1991,  

it pleaded guilty to violating both the clean  water and clean air acts, paying millions of  

dollars in damages. So, the fossil fuel giant  decided to do something about their tattered  

public image. Starting in 1985, Chevron shelled  out around 5 to 10 million dollars a year to  

create the “People Do” campaign. That’s right,  the company behind those nature filled commercials  

was the oil corporation Chevron. Throughout the  campaign, Chevron payed an estimated $200,000  

to make each 30-second ad that marketed  initiatives like their butterfly preserve.  

A preserve that cost just $5,000 a year to  maintain. A mere glance at the price tag reveals  

where the oil corporation’s motives lie: their  public image and their profits. But this type of  

ad campaign is common for corporations, especially  large multinationals. Fast forward to today,  

and greenwashing, or using environmental rhetoric  to boost sales or brand image while simultaneously  

polluting or destroying the environment, pervades  marketing campaigns. From oil giants like  

ExxonMobil, to Home Depot, to Nestle, right  on down to Instagram ads on your feed.  

Each of these companies have a vested  stake in misleading you into believing  

that the product and ultimately the company  is aiding in social and environmental change,  

but when it comes to greenwashing there is  a lot more at stake than getting misled.

Why Companies Greenwash 

From behind his desk in the economics department  of the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman, the  

father of neoliberal economics, penned an op-ed  for the New York Times. The year was 1970, and  

government regulation was trendy in the halls of  congress, passing numerous laws seeking to protect  

environmental and human well-being. Friedman saw  it differently. In his view, these regulations  

were not only bogging down corporations, but they  were also forcing businesses to do something that  

they were not meant to do. In his view, the  only social responsibility of corporations  

is to turn a profit for their shareholders.  Regulations, according to Friedman, just  

slowed down the machine of progress. This is the  core of neoliberalism, a theory of deregulation  

and free-market business that is foundational to  American and global enterprise today: Profit above  

all else. Which is why greenwashing  and claims of corporate responsibility  

must be seen less as a harmless misdirection, and  more as tools essential to the capitalist quest  

of expanding corporate profits. Under capitalism,  a corporation’s primary goal is to generate profit  

for shareholders and the capitalist class. To do  otherwise, to carve out space for the environment  

or god forbid the working class, would mean  fewer investors, less profit, and ultimately  

bankruptcy. If, however, a company like Nestle,  H&M, or Chevron can be seen as working towards  

the common good through PR campaigns and savvy  marketing without having to fundamentally change  

their business operations, then they’ve  protected or even expanded their profits.

But there are also a couple of other reasons  why so-called Corporate Social Responsibility  

and its offshoot, greenwashing, are so insidious.  For one, it rewrites the narrative of what  

change and climate action means. BP’s carbon  footprint campaign is a perfect example of this.  

By redirecting public attention from their  oil spills and emissions back towards our own  

personal carbon footprint, the oil giant made  climate action more about individual endeavors  

than corporate malfeasance. We see this again and  again, such as with H&M’s campaigns that co-op  

phrases like “eco-warrior” and “climate crusader”  to get you to buy more clothes. Essentially, these  

marketing schemes make us think that we can buy  our way out of social problems, when, in reality,  

the very companies we are buying from are causing  those social issues. The second way greenwashing  

is so threatening is that it lulls us into a false  sense of security. If we believe that corporations  

are changing for the good, then we can sit back  and let them do their work. This is exactly what  

Chevron’s “People Do” campaign was all about.  Indeed, Chao Gunter, director of the Public  

Media Center in San Francisco, notes that through  their misleading ads, “Chevron implies that maybe  

we don’t need a regulatory framework because the  oil companies are taking care of it.” In short, if  

corporations can trick us into trusting them to do  good, they can do whatever they want. Greenwashing  

allows for businesses to continue their  destructive practices by tossing scraps to us and  

claiming they’re giving us a whole meal. Because  any real change, any effective climate action,  

means changing the paradigm. Real solutions  to the climate crisis, like degrowth, building  

with local materials, agroecology farming, and  ecosocialism, all spell disaster for corporations  

because it means shifting priorities away  from profits and towards people and planet.  

Regardless of what these companies say,  their actions speak louder than their words.

Why Corporations Will Never Be Our Savior 

Since Chevron started running their  greenwashed “People Do” campaign  

they’ve racked up countless instances of  environmental destruction and exploitation.  

In 1988, while their ads were blanketing TVs and  magazines, Chevron’s El Segundo refinery leaked  

an estimated 252 million gallons of oil into the  surrounding groundwater. And to this day, Chevron  

refuses to clean up an oil spill so egregious  it came to be known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.”  

From 1964 to 1992, Texaco, which is now owned by  Chevron, dumped 72 billion liters of toxic water  

polluting a 1,700 mile area in the Ecuadorian  Amazon rainforest and tainting the water supply  

for the indigenous communities living near the  oil wells. But Chevron isn’t the only corporation  

claiming they’re doing good while they quietly  destroy our surroundings. Home Depot, for example,  

has had to pay a $28 million settlement because  it illegally dumped toxic waste in California  

despite running marketing campaigns aimed at  consumers to recycle their homemaking materials.  

And Nestle, with its claims of sustainable water  and packaging, is anything but sustainable. First  

of all, wrapping water in plastic is causing  a single-use plastic waste crisis, but to add  

insult to injury, Nestle’s subsidiaries like,  Arrowhead Water, which sources its water partly  

from California springs, an area notoriously  racked with a mega-drought, have been repeatedly  

accused of sucking aquifers dry wherever they  operate. These exploitative corporate practices  

reveal that to make the most profit they can,  corporations try to externalize as many costs  

as they can. And if they can say that they aren’t  externalizing costs while they actually are, then  

they've won… but at the cost of the planet and  the people slaving away under brutal conditions.

How We Change: 

Greenwashing and corporate social responsibility  are tactics. Plain and simple. They are used as  

ways to distract from the metaphorical boot on  our throats and on the throat of our planet. These  

misleading marketing campaigns are just another  example of the resilience of capitalism. For  

as long as capitalism continues to reign, so too  will the laborious task of deciphering misleading  

messaging. Capitalism is the problem, not our  buying habits. Think about how hard it is to find  

“sustainable” goods, and even after all that  hard work it’s still difficult to figure out  

whether the company is telling the truth. Here’s  the thing. There is no ethical consumption under  

capitalism. But the reason why there is no ethical  consumption under capitalism is that there are  

no ethical corporations under capitalism. Even  B-corporations like Patagonia are still driven  

by the profit motive and the bottom line.  All this means that to end greenwashing,  

to create economies where materials and goods  are crafted to fulfill uses rather than to fill  

wallets and make profits, we must end capitalism.  But building the power to do so, especially in  

imperial core countries like the United States,  is a multi-decade process, and the climate  

crisis demands action now. Which is why we need  harm-reduction strategies that use available tools  

right now. These look like forcing corporate  transparency through lawsuits, third-party  

auditing, and using regulating bodies to actually  enforce regulations as a way to make corporations  

live up to their promises. But importantly, these  harm-reduction strategies must mesh with the  

longer term work of building a post-capitalist  world. One that envisions an economy built on  

truths, on real environmental stewardship,  and on human and community well-being.

Of all the big multinationals professing to be  climate saviors, Nestle is certainly one of the  

worst. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to  fully dive into Nestle’s greenwashing campaigns  

in this video. So instead, I made a little bonus  part about Nestle’s environmental practices and  

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