Meaning
Misleading marketing or public relations that makes a company, product, or policy seem more environmentally friendly than it really is, typically through vague, exaggerated, or unverifiable eco claims. Strongly accusatory: it implies deliberate deception, and the word now appears in journalism, activism, and regulatory or legal disputes about environmental claims. Critical and accusatory; implies calculated deception, so common in campaigning and reporting but contested in legal settings. Regional use: General English worldwide; strongest in journalism, activism, and corporate regulation.
Origin
A blend of green and whitewash, sometimes called green sheen. It is usually credited to the New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld, whose 1986 essay mocked hotels that asked guests to reuse towels to save the planet while wasting energy elsewhere and pocketing the laundry savings. That story should be treated with care: Merriam-Webster notes that neither Wikipedia nor other references show where the essay was published, and its own citations date the noun to 1987 and the verb to 1989. The practices the word names are older, from the beverage industry's 1953 Keep America Beautiful campaign to Chevron's 1985 People Do ads. The term spread through 1990s environmental reporting - Greenpeace issued a greenwash compilation before the 1992 Rio Earth Summit - and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1999. European Union findings in the 2020s that over half of surveyed green claims were vague or unfounded have since pushed it into everyday regulatory debate.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- green sheen
- greenwash
- greenwashed
Usage Examples
- The airline's carbon-neutral adverts were fined as greenwashing by the consumer authority.
- Investigators concluded that most of the firm's sustainability claims amounted to greenwashing.
- She accused the bottled-water brand of greenwashing its plastic packaging with pictures of forests.