greenwash

English

WOTD – 17 March 2012

Etymology

Blend of green (“environmentally friendly”) +‎ whitewash (or green +‎ -wash), coined by Jay Westerveld in 1986.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹiːnwɒʃ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

greenwash (plural greenwashes)

1. A false or misleading picture of environmental friendliness used to conceal or obscure damaging activities.

   Synonym: greenwashing

   Coordinate terms: whitewash, bluewash, pinkwash

   • 2010, Meegan Jones, Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide, →ISBN, page 38:

     People can be cynical about companies hiding behind green ideals, their radars finely tuned to detect a greenwash.

   • 2020 November 9, Damian Carrington, “‘Hypocrites and greenwash’: Greta Thunberg blasts leaders over climate crisis”, in the Guardian‎^[1], retrieved 2020-11-09:

     Greta Thunberg has blasted politicians as hypocrites and international climate summits as empty words and greenwash.

Translations

misleading picture of environmental friendliness

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 漂綠 / 漂绿 (piǎolǜ)

• Danish: grønvaskning c
• Finnish: viherpesu (fi)
• French: écoblanchiment (fr)
• Japanese: グリーンウォッシング (gurīnwosshingu)
• Korean: 그린워싱 (geurinwosing)
• Spanish: lavado verde m, lavado verde de imagen m, greenwashing (es)
• Swedish: grönmålning c

Further reading

• Greenwashing on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

greenwash (third-person singular simple present greenwashes, present participle greenwashing, simple past and past participle greenwashed)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To portray with a false or misleading image of environmental friendliness so as to conceal or obscure damaging activities.

   Hyponym: sustainwash

   Coordinate terms: bluewash, redwash, brownwash, whitewash; humanewash

   • 2011, Elaine Wellin, Kristen Seraphin, Project Censored, Censored 2012: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2010-11‎^[2], →ISBN, Health and the Environment:

     But what happens more often is that media “greenwashes” dirty energy sources (coal, gas, nuclear power) as “clean”—a particularly dangerous notion because it belies the threat they pose to our planet and human health.

   • 2016 August 20, Bruce Watson, “The troubling evolution of corporate greenwashing”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     The commercials were very effective – in 1990, they won an Effie advertising award, and subsequently became a case study at Harvard Business school. They also became notorious among environmentalists, who have proclaimed them the gold standard of greenwashing – the corporate practice of making diverting sustainability claims to cover a questionable environmental record.

   • 2023, WWF—Hong Kong, “Submission on Product Eco-responsibility (Amendment) Bill 2023 (LC Paper No. CB(1)398/2023(09))”, in Documents of the Hong Kong Legislative Council‎^[4], page 2:

     WWF recommends including the following Clauses in the Bill to avoid potential loopholes: […] Provide clear and comprehensive definitions of “disposable” and “single-use” to avoid greenwashing and false claims for products designed to be disposable but falsely marketed otherwise to circumvent the ban.

Related terms

• green tape

Translations

to disseminate such information

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 漂綠 / 漂绿 (piǎolǜ)

• Danish: grønvaske
• Finnish: viherpestä
• Hungarian: (dezinformációval) zöldnek/​környezettudatosnak állít be, zöld/​környezettudatos látszatot kelt(ve dezinformál), zöldnek tüntet fel / álcáz
• Swedish: grönmåla (sv)

Anagrams

• Greenhaws