Unsustainable claims on sustainability will eventually drive customers away

I don’t know about you – but I don’t believe most of the green marketing claims that I read.  Maybe it’s because so many of the advertised benefits seem so outlandish. 

Out of nowhere, all manner of companies – most having previously been silent about their social or environmental performance - are suddenly telling us that they are about to save the earth.  So, many of the claims we read seem so implausible that it’s hard to take them seriously. 

Take, for example, energy companies whose entire businesses have been built on burning fossil fuels.  Some are now telling us that they are ‘green’ energy companies – although they still pump out more carbon than most other companies put together.  The basis for their claims can be highly variable – from selective investments in particular technologies, to sweeping corporate reduction targets.  What should we believe? Is it ‘worth’ attempting to buy energy on a ‘green’ or renewables based tariff? 

Really  undertanding carbon reduction plans can be a science in itself - but one thing for certain is that companies that have traditionally been massive carbon-emitters are not suddenly oging to stop releasing polluting gases overnight. And woul we really expect them to - since we all depend on them to keep the lights on and provide fuel for our transportation.  

So, how can we judge whether what they have done is enough – and when would this be enough to award themselves a green halo?  

According to MORI, 80% of consumers believe that brands ‘do not tell the whole truth’ when they speak about issues of corporate responsibility.  Between 2006 and 2007, complaints to the ASA regarding brands being ‘misleading’ on CSR rose by a factor of 5. 

So, how should the print industry respond in the face of this headlong rush towards green-wash and the growing realisation that not all green claims are true? 

Looking around the web-sites and product literature of many in the industry, a myriad of claims are being made.  It seems that there is a pressure to ‘say something’ about your environmental credentials, but does this always make sense? 

In many cases, the drivers are coming from customers – particularly in the public sector and, increasingly, from companies. The customer may always be right, but surely it’s better to say something you can back up - and for which the basis for the claim is clear.   A weak claim could fly under the radar and may be accepted in good faith by an undiscriminating buyer, but it will do more harm than good if an over-stated marketing claim is subsequently shown to lack substance – or missing the point. 

One of the current fads being adopted by print companies is the question of carbon footprinting and carbon neutrality. Many in the industry are making claims about their carbon impacts in their literature. 

The theory goes that we can somehow ‘account’ for all the sources of carbon emissions associated with a product or process.  Armed with a number to describe the amount of carbon generated, we can then drive down emissions and, what we can’t avoid, we can undo: for example, through an ‘off-set’ scheme.  Hence, making the product of business carbon neutral. 

The problem with this kind of analysis is that there is no simple way of doing the maths or describing how the numbers are created - at least, not in a way that can easily be communicated to customers.  

A big question relates to how much of a company’s operations are to be included.  Yes, the heavy-hitters like the energy imported to drive the presses may be an obvious thing to include, but what about the energy needed to make the paper at the mill?  Or, what about felling the trees in the forest, or transporting the logs to where the paper is made? Or transporting your products to customers? 

Without clarity on all of these questions, any general claim to be ‘carbon neutral’ is at best meaningless and probably misleading. 

When I hear it said that the cost of achieving carbon neutrality is very low, it doesn’t fill me full of confidence that all of the impacts have been included. 

The whole issue of off-setting is also controversial.  The idea is that by contributing to carbon reduction activities elsewhere – such as a tree planting project or a renewable energy investment – the damage caused by your residual carbon can be undone.  The problem is that the methods used to calculate the carbon reductions are subject to just the same issues as carbon-footprinting your operation.  The off-setting industry is not regulated and so some schemes are more reliable than others. 

Having said that, I don’t subscribe to the idea that we shouldn’t bother with off-setting - my own company off-sets its business travel.  To do this, we use a firm called Carbon-Offsets (www.carbon-offsets.com) because they only use what are called Certified Emissions Reductions, which are independently checked, and we are able to specify which project we want to invest in.  But to achieve that extra confidence, we pay a premium to make sure we get something that can be trusted. 

Independent checking is one of the best ways of avoiding claims of green-wash and, if you are committed to looking at your carbon footprint, organisations like the Carbon Neutral Company (www.carbonneutral.com) exist which have a well-developed measurement protocol and a certification scheme. 

I wouldn’t want to discourage any print company from exploring ways to reduce its carbon footprint.  But I think we should all engage our brains before going too far down this road. If you are going to invest in any environmental project, you should first make sure you understand where your biggest impacts lie and concentrate on those.   It has to make sense to drive energy efficiency into your business anyway, not least because of the crippling costs of energy nowadays. 

As a rule of thumb, any well thought through initiative should save resources and therefore reduce costs.  This has to be a welcome thought -particularly at the moment. 

I’m just not so sure that we will look back in ten years time and think that ‘going carbon neutral’ was the biggest priority.   

Mark Line is executive chairman of sustainability and corporate responsibility consultancy, Two Tomorrows Group Limited.  First published in Print Week, 7 November 2008.  Reproduced with permission.