The Narwhal | News on Climate Change, Environmental Issues in Canada

Pretty Little Industrial Liars, Pt. 2

Adam Kingsmith — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Big Industry has committed some of the most atrocious crimes against the environment in Canada and around the world with little fear of reprisal. This is Part Two of a two–part series highlighting some small and large-scale instances of industrial–environmental greenwashing and misdirection in an attempt to better hold conglomerates accountable to the Canadian public.

The Industrial Bait and Pollute Like an environmental fairy tale, it has been thrust into our consciousness for more than a generation — carpool, recycle, take shorter showers, unplug electronics, and shop green, we’ve all got a part to play in conserving the planet for future generations. The Citizen’s Guide to Pollution Prevention — a report from the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy published in collaboration with the federal government, is a perfect example of this institutionalised emphasis on the role individuals are to play if the devastating effects of climate change are to be mediated.

Swelling with inspiring language and motivational quotes garnered from collage dorm-room posters — Ghandi’s “…be the change…” leads the charge, the guide is framed as a selfless tool “designed to give citizens (you!) the knowledge to start realising your pollution prevention goals” by engaging the “citizen chain of change.”

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After sifting through the guff however, it becomes apparent that the guide is little more than a re-packaged reiteration of the age-old business-first-environment-second paradigm, which posits that the best way for individuals to combat global warming is to act and think small-scale by making trivial little changes to their daily routines. It asks of its readers the usual. Decrease waste by choosing products with recyclable packaging — reduce toxins by buying mercury free-products — conserve water by turning off the tap — use efficient transportation by carpooling, biking, or taking public transit — reduce energy consumption by turning off unnecessary lights — and of course, openly support “greener” government developments and policies. If we do things such as these, individuals and big industry can continue their respective levels of intake and growth, while enjoying a “sustainable consumption [that] not only prevents pollution, but also combats climate change.” It's just that easy! Image Credit: Rubbermaid Products/Flickr Except we can’t, and it won’t — not because being environmentally conscious about how we live and shop as individuals isn’t important, but because we have crossed an ecological threshold that requires much more drastic measures to mediate. Just stop think about what is happening to our planet. Over 97 per cent of the world’s top scientists agree that global warming is not only a reality — it is an anthropologically prompted (man-made) one. What’s more, the rate of heat building up on Earth over the past decade — 30 per cent of which materialises deep in our oceans, is equivalent to the detonation 4 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs per second. Earth has recently seen the end of over 4 centuries of climate stability, and the planet is so saturated in exponential environmental degradation that it may be uninhabitable as soon as 2300. Thus a few million small-scale efforts — however noble, are nowhere near revolutionary enough to alter the warming status quo. Of course, this doesn’t mean an environmentally conscious person can’t make a difference — it means that we concerned citizens need to look beyond the individual, fusing our conservationist efforts into a more collective movement that challenges the industrial sectors of the economy which most contribute to our roasting planet. After all, when the pollutants from a single year of tar sands production are greater than the greenhouse gas emissions of all the cars being driven on Canadian roads, is carpooling really going to make a drastic difference? When over a dozen freshwater lakes are quietly re-classified as toxic dumpsites for mining corporations, does more infrequently watering your lawn or taking the occasional shorter shower really make an overwhelming contribution to water conservation? And when — as Part 1 of this series pointed out, 98 per cent of industrial manufacturers in North America greenwash their products by embellishing how sustainable they truly are, does shopping “green” really help anything? In reality, all the fairy tales, “citizen chain[s] of change” and greenwashed consumer goods, these are nothing more than petty attempts by industrial lobbyists — and at times the Harper Administration, to misdirect the populous away from the havoc resource extraction and manufacturing are wreaking on the Canadian environment.

Oil and gas, pulp and paper, mining, logging, plastics, chemicals — thanks in part to the deregulation of industrial sectors such as these — Albertan industry contributed 48 per cent of total national emissions in 2011 alone, Canadian emissions have grown 24 per cent since 1990, making Canada the most polluting of all the G8 countries. All the while Canadian media coverage of climate change has fallen by 80 per cent since 2007 — the year Harper’s administration put restrictive informational policies in place, government scientists continue to be relentlessly muzzled, and since 2008, well-funded industrial lobby groups such as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers have been granted more than 2,700 meetings with federal officeholders. Big industry — with help from a petro-obsessed government, has effectually engaged in media censoring, government lobbying, greenwashing and “things you can do to help” list-making in order to propagandise, misdirect, and scam the citizenry into thinking that all will be well if we keep playing our small parts — pretty little lies that for the most part serve to keep us distracted from the bigger conservational picture. Yet buried under all this rhetoric is an unconformable environmental truth. If we want to work at reversing the affects of climate change, it’s going to require more than inconveniencing our daily routine by stopping off at the bottle depot. It’s going to require sacrifice, discontent, and a willingness to put our planet before our pockets. So launch a blog, organise a protest, write angry letters, start a local advocacy group, push the boundaries by mobilising loudly — fighting with dollars, words, actions, and votes — to remind our current government and its industrial allies that we the concerned citizenry can see right through all the greenwashings and misdirections. What is best for the Canadian industries, and what is best for the Canadians citizenries are not necessarily one and the same. And as prominent academics and journalists are increasingly labelling Canada as “a rouge and reckless petro-state,” the time for industry-centric bottom-lines, apathetic good intentions, and lacklustre individual efforts has long past. As a single denied pipeline or chemical dumping proposal can do more for the combating of global warming than a lifetime of recycling, carpooling, and “green” shopping ever could, it's time for concerned citizens to critically redefine how we engage in activism and environmentalism for a future that requires more from humanity than we are currently giving. Image Credit: World Bank Photo Collection /Flickr

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Pretty Little Industrial Liars, Pt. 1

Adam Kingsmith — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 19:10:19 +0000

Big Industry has committed some of the most atrocious crimes against the environment in Canada and around the world with little fear of reprisal. This is Part One of a two–part series highlighting some small and large-scale instances of industrial–environmental greenwashing and misdirection in an attempt to better hold conglomerates accountable to the Canadian public. Read Part 2 here.

Greenwashing the Canadian Consumer The deplorable act of greenwashing — constructing the misleading perception that a company’s policies, practices, products, or services are environmentally responsible and sustainable, is becoming common practice amongst titans of industry in Canada. It should come as little shock to acute Canadians that fossil fuels and the tar sands — more genially referred to as the “oil sands” by energy multinationals and the Harper Government, are being linguistically and rhetorically greenwashed — my colleague Jeff Gailus has an insightful three-part series exploring this very issue.

What may come as more of a shock to a consumer society such as ours attempting to shop its way out of an impending environmental disaster — polls have shown that at least 70 per cent of Canadian consumers say they are willing to spend up to 20 per cent more for environmentally preferable items — is the inordinate amount of greenwashing happening in the everyday marketplace.

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According to a report by the environmental advocacy firm TerraChoice, 98% of the 2,219 primarily household cleaning and paper products examined in North America — all but 25 to be exact, were found to be guilty of at least one of “The Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” Sins that encompass a lack of proof, vagueness, irrelevance, fibbing, “hidden trade-offs,” “the lesser of two evils,” and “fake and false label certifications.” In Canada, most transgressions fall into three categories: vague language, lack of proof, and “hidden trade-offs” — suggesting a product is “green” based on a narrow set of attributes without paying attention to other important environmental issues — i.e. paper from a sustainably harvested forest can still contribute high levels of pollution during the production process. Thus while elusive monikers such as “all-natural,” “eco-friendly,” and “chemical-free” are increasingly slapped on everything in Canadian markets from shampoo bottles and bathroom cleaners to mainstream fashions and pet foods, it all equates to little more than what activist and author Adria Vasil calls “a tsunami of greenwash.” The "Greenwash Guerillas" trying to wade through the tsunami. Image Credit: fotdmike/Flickr This tsunami can be nearly impossible to navigate, as large multinationals think — rightly so much of the time, that consumers aren’t interested in reading too deeply into the environmental characteristics of what they purchase, shoppers just want the instant gratification that comes from buying “green,” “organic,” or “sustainable” products. If the products are actually any of those things seems to be a mute point. The more the average shopper harbours these armchair ecological consumption habits, the more that companies are going to stretch and even falsify the “greener” qualities of their products — resulting in a marketplace that requires an exceedingly methodical and labour intensive effort on the part of the savvy consumer in order to distinguish between corporate greenwashing and legitimate environmentalism. One such savvy consumer is the abovementioned Adria Vasil, who recently partnered with the CBC’s Marketplace to provide specific examples of household products sold in Canada found guilty of committing multiple greenwashing sins. Some of the culpable products include: Dawn antibacterial dish soap — championed as a cleaner of animals post-oil spills, it contains Tricolsan, an agent that is toxic to aquatic life, T-fal Natura frying pans — claiming to be free of non-stick carcinogens that the company has been found to use in the manufacturing process, and Sunlight Green Clean laundry soap — declaring to be mainly plant based, a test of the product revealed 38 per cent petro-chemicals, which leave a major environmental footprint. These examples — and the 7 others fingered in the exposé, represent only a drop in a greenwashed bucket overflowing with thousands of products on the shelf in Canada today. Honest, environmentally conscious goods are an exception to the rule. However, not all of the blame for this wave of greenwashing relentlessly sweeping across the Canadian market can rest upon misleading corporations or apathetic consumers. Despite repeated pleas from scientists and advocacy groups, the Harper government has been hesitant to institute an exclusive regulating body that could serve as the federal greenwashing watchdog by verifying “green” product claims. Instead, the verification of eco-friendly products are left to the Competition Bureau — a loosely regulated government institution with nefarious ties to Big Industry that has gone on record saying it will only act if an official complaint has been filed, the privately-run Canadian Standards Association — loyal to its industrial backers, and the corporations themselves — many of whom have introduced ambiguous and internal “Environmental Management Systems,” which, as is highlighted in the satirical clip below, have been repeatedly caught falsifying official-looking certifications ripe with green jargon such as “eco-preferred.” Of course, there are some genuinely environmentally minded companies sprinkled amidst all the self-certifiers and eco-proliferators. The best way to find them is to look for products that have been endorsed by a third party group known for its strict natural regulations — some of the more established in Canada include: EcoCert, EcoLogo, Cosmos Organic, Certified Natural Products, or Natural Products Association. What’s more, visitors to the Ecolabel Index — tracking 436 ecolabels in 197 countries and 25 industry sectors, it is the largest global directory of green certifications — can rate, review, and discuss all the world’s independently certified labels across 10 classifications including: electronics, food, forest products, retail goods, and textiles. At the end of the day, the best thing the consumer can do to push the market away from greenwashed products is to stop buying them. So familiarise yourself with harmful ingredients, look for independently verified certifications, cross-reference with the Ecolabel Index, but remember, greenwashing is only part of the deception. Moving beyond the role of the individual consumer, Part Two of this series will cut through industrial rhetoric in order to address why we as an environmentally-conscientious citizenry need to push for more regulative policies directly addressing the largest and most under-regulated polluters of all — transnational resource extraction and manufacturing industries. Continue to Part 2. Image Credit: fodtmike/Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.