Greenwashing Essay

After experiencing the two warmest years on record, 2014 and 2015, the need is greater than ever to change our relationship with our planet. Presently, various forces are pushing companies operating in the U.S. to become sustainable, but what does this really mean for them, and for the planet? The term sustainability has picked up steam as a “buzz” word. Business leaders, students, scholars, policy makers and even designers have vigorously joined the discussion on sustainability during the last decade. It has been observed that the trend to adopt and promote business practices that incorporate sustainability concerns into corporate environmental strategies and policies has steadily increased since the late 1980’s (Seager 2008).
Alongside the surge in sustainable business practices a new issue has emerged: Greenwashing. Greenwashing is a corporate practice where businesses use marketing tools to create the appearance of being green, without corresponding tangible environmental action. The relatively new notion of sustainability makes for elusive compliance standards in many settings. The absence of well …show more content…
For example, one definition of sustainability is derived from the concept of sustainable yield as it applies to natural resources such as forests and fisheries which more specifically, means that when “properly [is] exploited, [renewable resources] can provide a steady yield in perpetuity” (Gatto 1995). Sustainable yield is important for the proper delegation of our natural resources to properly ensure that our resources do not run out and are available for future generations. Biologists and ecologists promulgate this particular idea of sustainability for the most part while other branches of science and policy promulgate for other branches of sustainability. This is because each entity fights for what is most relevant for