Researchers warn of corporate 'greenwashing epidemic'

GreenWatch has developed an algorithm-based tool to detect greenwashing. Picture: iStock

An academic who is researching claims companies make about their environmental credentials has said “greenwashing” is now an epidemic.

With funding from Science Foundation Ireland, Professor Fabiola Schneider and a team of 20 researchers have been looking at hundreds of claims made by companies since 2021.

Prof Schneider says people need to be very wary about claims any company makes about how green they are.

Some of the companies are based in Ireland but they are also from all over the world and across all sectors.

To help with the research, Prof Schneider and her colleagues use artificial intelligence (AI) to go through thousands of company reports analysing environment-related data.

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Their research is being used to advise EU regulators looking at enforcing the requirements companies have to honestly disclose their green credentials.

Led by climate finance expert Professor Andreas Hoepner, the GreenWatch team has developed an algorithm-based tool to detect greenwashing.

This has been established to help improve the measurement of progress by companies around the world towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to tackle climate change.

Professor Fabiola Schneider says people need to be very wary about claims any company makes about how green they are. Picture credit: Fabiola Schneider

Prof Schneider, GreenWatch co-lead and assistant professor in accounting at UCD, said: “Greenwashing is huge. From our research so far, it is very widespread. It’s an epidemic.

“People should be very, very wary of anything companies say unless they back up what they say.” 

She said a classic claim that is made by companies is that they will be carbon neutral by some date in the future.

"I don't believe anybody can credibly claim to be carbon neutral right now. Anybody who makes a grand claim like that needs looking into because these claims are all too often practically impossible to quantify.

“It is hard to say if someone is really greenwashing but at GreenWatch we have devised a way to rate the probability of a company greenwashing. We are not looking at chimneys or satellite data," she said.

We are looking at what companies say about themselves and what we are finding time and time again is that company data does not match whatever the company says about itself.

GreenWatch looks at any claim made, and they classify it in terms of “boldness”.

“If a company makes a very vague and very bold claim about itself, then that is already very concerning unless they really are a climate hero. A bold or absolute claim is like ‘We are a sustainability champion’. What we do is then look for any proof to back up that claim.” 

She pointed to a number of tactics big companies may use. So-called “green shifting” is one, where a company will deflect the blame away from itself and onto the consumer.

Another is “green lighting”.

“If you ever go through an airport, you will frequently see posters of cows eating grass in fields around wind farms, created by fossil-fuel companies,” Prof Schneider said.

“What they are doing sounds great, but in reality those renewable energy efforts are a very small fraction of what they do. That's greenlighting."

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