The term Greenrinsing refers to a company’s practice of regularly changing its ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) targets before they are achieved.
This tactic showcases how greenwashing has evolved and become increasingly sophisticated.
It stems from companies that set ambitious goals but fail to meet them; their rhetoric does not align with sustainability outcomes.
In recent years, we’ve seen a surge in sustainability metrics, claims, and goals, but many are not backed by tangible actions or appear unlikely to be met.
Greenlabelling is a practice where marketers label a product or service as “green” or sustainable.
However, closer scrutiny might reveal that such claims are misleading or only partially true.
This form of greenwashing is widespread, making it challenging for consumers and businesses to differentiate among the myriad of environmental labels and initiatives in the market.
Many terms, such as “bio”, “natural”, “green”, and “eco-friendly”, are often ambiguously used, complicating the understanding of their genuine meaning and value.
Greenshifting involves companies implying that consumers are at fault, shifting the blame onto them.
This strategy emerges when firms emphasize what consumers can or should do to reduce emissions or positively impact the environment, despite being aware of the significant impact of their products or services.
Advertising agencies are expected to be more cautious about adopting this approach in the future, as it’s one of the more easily identifiable greenwashing tactics.
Greenlighting occurs when company communications, including advertisements, highlight particular green aspects of their operations or products, no matter how small, in order to divert attention from environmentally harmful activities conducted elsewhere.
This practice aims to showcase the company in a positive light by emphasizing only certain aspects, while other less sustainable operations might be overlooked.
It’s a strategy that can mislead consumers, focusing their attention on environmentally positive initiatives while neglecting less sustainable activities.
Greencrowding is based on the idea of hiding within a crowd to avoid detection, relying on safety in numbers.
While some groups may appear as strong advocates for sustainability, the reality can be different.
Despite large numbers and media commitment, actual actions might be minimal.
Caution is advised when evaluating such initiatives, checking the real progress against stated objectives.
Greenbickering refers to a strategy adopted by a company to identify and counter deceptive or unfair “green” communication practices by competitors.
The term is a neologism combining two English words, “green,” which refers to environmentally sustainable practices and policies, and “bickering,” which indicates a conflict or dispute.
Greenbickering action by a company can manifest itself in various ways, including legal appeals.
Zero Waste (translated “Zero Waste”) is a philosophy and lifestyle that aims to reduce the amount of waste that is generated and sent to landfills or incinerators.
The goal of zero waste is to redesign how we produce and consume goods so that nothing is wasted or thrown away.
The concept of zero waste is based on the idea of a Circular Economy, where resources are kept in use for as long as possible, and waste is minimized through the use of sustainable materials and production methods.
Environmental education is an educational process that aims to raise people’s awareness of environmental problems and provide them with the knowledge, skills and motivation necessary to adopt more sustainable and environmentally responsible behaviour.
The main objective is to promote a cultural change that leads to a greater awareness of the impact of human activity on the environment and a concrete commitment to reduce this effect.
GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) is an international non-profit organization, which has developed a standard, known as the GRI Standard, to provide guidance to organizations wishing to communicate their sustainable performance transparently and comprehensively, through the publication of sustainability reports.
Reports based on GRI Standards assess the economic, environmental and social impacts of companies, allowing organizations to identify and evaluate their sustainable impact in a comprehensive and transparent way, in order to improve their sustainable performance
Industrial symbiosis means the interaction between different industrial plants, grouped in districts or at a distance useful to make the operation feasible, used in order to maximize the reuse of resources, normally considered waste and optimizing knowledge and skills between companies.
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The term “market remittance” (or Re-marketing) refers to all strategies for the reintegration, in the market and in primary and secondary channels, of products that have undergone one or more processes related to the Circular Economy and must be resold.
A Repair Café is a community-based initiative, where people share their experience and skills, on a voluntary basis, to other individuals and are places where people gather to repair household items, electronics and other everyday objects.
Overall, the Repair Café is a great way to promote sustainability by reducing waste and encouraging reuse and recycling.
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The term Green Hushing refers to false or misleading claims of corporate sustainability, and is used when a company has announced a climate goal, but does not intend to clearly advertise its commitment to achieving it.
It is the so-called “green silence”.
This can complicate the assessment of corporate climate goals, limit knowledge sharing on decarbonisation, lead to less ambitious goals and miss opportunities for cross-sectoral collaboration.
“Carbon zero” is a term similar to “carbon neutrality” and indicates the same goal of balancing the emissions of greenhouse gases produced by human activities with the ability of the Earth to absorb them.
In general, the term “carbon zero” refers to situations where the net environmental impact of human activities on the environment is zero in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, while the term “carbon neutrality” refers to situations where greenhouse gas emissions are balanced by a compensatory action that removes or reduces carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
Both terms are important targets for combating climate change and require concrete actions such as the use of renewable energy, energy efficiency and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Performance-based economy is an economic model that combines business performance management with the adoption of circular practices.
The main objective is to maximize the economic and environmental value generated by business activities, reducing waste and promoting the recovery and reuse of resources.
Performance-based economy includes several practices, including:
The performance economy can be an opportunity for companies to improve their sustainability, generating economic and environmental value.
However, it is necessary that the practices adopted are actually circular and not just a greenwashing, and that they are supported by appropriate policies and regulations at national and international level.
Green washing is a term that indicates the practice of using marketing or communication techniques to promote products or services as ecological or sustainable, when in reality they are not or have a very limited environmental impact.
In other words, it is a way of making a company appear to be committed to the environment without any real action to support that commitment.
Green washing is considered ethically questionable, as it can be misleading for consumers and hinder real progress in sustainability
With the term Green Branding, we mean all communication and promotion activities, implemented by companies, associations or startups, aimed at enhancing the aspects and values of sustainability of their brand, in line with environmental protection, respecting the principles of environmental sustainability
Green Branding offers Green businesses creative and effective tools to spread their messages through eco-sustainable communication activities.
According to the definition of the European Commission, the bioeconomy “concerns all sectors and systems based on biological resources (animal and plant species, micro-organisms and the resulting biomass, including organic waste)”, or includes “all primary production sectors using and producing biological resources (agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture), and all economic and industrial sectors using biological resources and processes for the production of food, feed, bio-based products, energy and services”.
Moving away from fossil raw materials towards a circular and sustainable economy based on biological resources and processes and oriented to the natural cycles of materials, is what represents the concept of bioeconomy.
Ecodesign (or sustainable design/engineering) is an economic model that involves the entire process of conception, design, sale on the market and disposal of an environmentally friendly product by reducing the negative impact it could have on the ecosystem to a minimum.
Consequently, the materials chosen must be sustainable and recyclable with the utmost respect for the environment and primary resources.
Plastic-free, which literally means “free from plastic”, is often denounced only as a marketing slogan, but is actually a commitment to a more correct use of this material, since a world without plastic is impossible.
Being Plastic-free means giving up disposable plastic items where there are reusable alternatives on the market that allow you to maintain the need for hygiene, preservation and integrity.
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