"Companies are eager to tout their environmental progress on Earth Day. Here are five tips for investigating whether their claims tell the full story."
"As big businesses face more pressure to act on climate change, corporations have unleashed a tsunami of environmental pledges, net-zero commitments and sustainability certifications, all designed to show they are part of the solution.
Often, critics say, these claims are just “greenwashing” — environmental marketing with little or no substance behind it. One recent review of 500 commercial websites by the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority found 40 percent of environmental claims to be misleading in some way, such as using terms like “sustainable” without defining them or omitting pertinent information about environmental harms. “Carbon neutral” usually does not mean a firm has zero carbon emissions. A green certification label on a product’s packaging may have no connection to a standard-setting group.
For the average consumer, it can be difficult to assess which companies are taking meaningful steps to combat climate change, said Frederic Hans, a climate policy analyst at the New Climate Institute, an independent, Germany-based organization that promotes measures to slow Earth’s warming. The group this year analyzed the climate plans of 25 big companies and found many of them overestimated the extent to which their actions would reduce carbon emissions."
Douglas MacMillan reports for the Washington Post April 21, 2022.
Advertisement 
