'Greenwashing can range from putting products in green bottles and printing grass and flowers on the labels.'

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G is for ...

…greenwash This is the use of marketing and PR to make something look greener than it actually is.

The term greenwash was coined by Jay Westerveld, in response to the cards in hotels asking you to reuse your towels – a practice that can have as much to do with saving money as being green (and in my personal experience is often ignored by the hotels anyway).

Some examples of greenwash:

• Landrover – can a 4x4 ever really be green?
• Credit Agricole’s green banking, despite funding oil exploration
• Barbie’s Bcause range of products made from waste textiles, while the dolls are sold in unrecyclable packaging
• Shell’s spending more on advertising its support of an eco project than it actually donated to the project itself.

Greenwashing can range from putting products in green bottles and printing grass and flowers on the labels through to including endorsements from made-up companies.

Spot

Greenwash can be very persuasive, and isn’t always easy to spot.

How to navigate around greenwash? Read labels carefully, look for evidence, do some research, and remember that everything is not always what it seems.

Read about the seven sins of greenwash and then play Name That Sin to see how good you are at spotting them (though be aware that it’s a North American site so some of the labels may be unfamiliar).

H is for….

…hydroelectricity. Hydroelectric power or hydropower uses fast flower water through a turbine to generate electricity.

Cragside House in Northumberland was probably the first in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity in 1868, and the US’s first hydroelectric power plant was built in 1879 at Niagara Falls.

Around 1.8% of the UK’s current generating potential is through hydroelectric power, and in many countries, hydroelectric power generation provides most of their power.

While hydroelectric power generation is expensive to install, it is very efficient and is low maintenance once installed, and saves on use of oil and other fossil fuels.

However, while hydroelectricity is fossil fuel-free, it’s not necessarily ethically neutral. It often requires damming of rivers and flooding of valleys, displacing human populations and destroying natural habitat.

Habitat

A project to dam a river in Chile to provide hydroelectric power will destroy habitat for an endangered deer, and the Three Gorges dam in China has created environmental problems and involved the relocation of 1.3 million people from 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages.

Hydroelectric power plants can affect the quality of water downstream by reducing levels of dissolved oxygen and changing the temperature, and stop flooding depositing fertile silts, which means that farmers have to use more fertilizers.

Some hydroelectric plants can also produce high levels of greenhouse gases, and filling of large reservoirs can even start earthquakes.

Like many green projects, the ‘eco-ness’ and ethics hydroelectricity are not straightforward, and many issues have to be taken into account, and can be distorted by greenwash.

Perhaps it is as important, or even more important, simply to reduce our use of power than to find new ways to generate it.

Other articles

• Read the AB article in the series

• Read the CD article in the series

• Read the EF article in the series

• Suzanne Elvidge is a freelance writer and the Surefish Ethical Living Editor