Environmental claims, climate-related and greenwashing: Number of environmental claims made by the 33 largest meat and dairy companies, broken down into climate-related and non-climate-related claims, alongside the number of those environmental claims that were classified as greenwashing. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000773.g001
By now, for large producers it has become fashionable to write “sustainable”, “responsible”, “net zero”, all things used to make companies look like they care about climate issues and to present themselves in a good light to consumers, especially when it comes to the meat or dairy section.
Obviously anyone with even a minimum of critical thinking knows these are all marketing nonsense, and in fact a recent study published in PLOS Climate analyzed 1,233 environmental claims from the world’s leading companies in the sector. Of these, 1,213, meaning 98%, show elements of greenwashing. This means that almost everything communicated to consumers about climate and sustainability is, in the best case, incomplete… in other words nonsense like I just wrote above.
Almost 70% of the claims relate to climate, but 38% are future promises, vague and generic, like “we will be net zero by 2030 or 2040”, empty words thrown around, and in fact the problem is that there is often no concrete plan behind these statements. Even more telling: only 29% of the claims are supported by any kind of evidence, and in most cases it is internal company data, which is basically meaningless. Those based on independent scientific studies? The staggering number of just three out of over twelve hundred, you read that right, three out of over 1200 are supported by real and impartial scientific data.
And then there are the examples of fake projects, things that look great on paper but are practically never implemented at any meaningful scale, such as “regenerative agriculture” applied to a handful of farms compared to global production volumes. Tiny reductions in packaging presented as environmental breakthroughs. Eco labels that do not translate into measurable benefits.
This shows anyone who still believed all the nonsense being fed to consumers that sustainability is mostly communication, making yourself look good and better than others without doing anything significant; the goal is to create the appearance of change.
And at this point, does it really make sense to look for the “eco friendly” product inside a system that works like this?
References: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000773