The 10th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines greenwash as "disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.

So greenwashing can be said to be the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy.

The U.S.-based watchdog group CorpWatch, in turn, defines greenwash as "the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment." This definition was shaped by the group's focus on corporate behavior and the rise of corporate green advertising at the time. However, governments, political candidates, trade associations and non-government organizations have also been accused of greenwashing. (i)

In a recent article in the Asian Wall Street Journal written by Tom Wright, the writer claims that the misguided decision of the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority to label the Malaysian Palm Oil Council’s ads which appeared on satellite channels across Europe, Asia and the US as “misleading” was an example of a greenwashing ad being taken to task, since the ads claimed that the industry was “good for the environment.”(ii) The ads featured a man jogging through a natural rain forest, interspersed with shots of palm oil plantations and wildlife followed by a voiceover: “Malaysian palm oil.  Its trees give life and help our planet breathe.”

I have personally viewed the ads on numerous occasions on my sat-tv after a hard day’s work in my beloved home office in Bethesda, MD and have yet to hear a single mention that palm oil is “superior” to the natural rain forests.  No where in the ads are such claims made.  However, the fact remains that palm oil plantations typically plant the tree crop in a neat but fairly dense formation which enables the plantations to serve as a planted forest which makes palm oil plantations far superior to all other oil seeds in sequestering CO2.

I have visited palm oil plantations in Malaysia and one thing that strikes me is that it is virtually impossible to take a meaningful jog through a plantation without eventually coming face to face with secondary jungle. Coming across wild life is also not that rare an occurrence as anyone familiar with palm oil plantations and the secondary jungle appurtenant to these plantations will attest. That is how well preserved the green cover in Malaysia is, as palm oil, whilst grown only in logged over areas and legitimately endowed agricultural land continue to sit, cheek to jowl with the tropical jungle. So the ad is both visually, factually and technically accurate for palm oil trees do “give life and help our planet breathe.”  The same claim cannot be made by the competing oil seeds such as soy, rapeseed and sunflower, at least, not in the sense of CO2 sequestration.  Moreover, the aforementioned competing oil seeds are not tree crops.  They are annual crops which require annual harvesting, fallow lies and replanting which can never hope to replicate palm oil’s role in CO2 sequestration.  By contrast, palm oil trees are perennial crops that once planted, remain productive and are not cut down for 20-30 years, which enable palm oil plantations to sequester CO2 and produce oxygen which helps the planet breathe, at least on a far greater scale than the competing oil seeds.

That the UK Advertising Standards Authority should rule the ads “misleading” is so baffling that the Palm Oil Truth Foundation has to ask if the Authority is beholden to the competing oil seed lobbies in Europe, as has been suggested by various quarters. Could it be symptomatic of the need to preserve western hegemony not only in the political and military level but now also in the world of commodity exports?  Whatever it is, it is decisions such as these that will eventually erode the credibility of this Authority!  THE END.

References: 

(i)  Greenwash Fact Sheet, CorpWatch, March 22, 2001.
(ii) Asian Wall Street Journal, Jan 30th, 2008, Page B4