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I don't know about you, but I don't believe most of the green marketing claims that I read. Perhaps it's because many of the advertised benefits seem so outlandish. Out of nowhere, all manner of companies, most having previously been silent about their social or environmental performance, are suddenly telling us that they are about to save the earth. So many of the claims we read seem so implausible that it's hard to take them seriously.

Take for example, energy companies whose entire business has been built on the process of burning fossil fuels. Some are now telling us that they are green energy companies, although they still pump out more carbon than entire industry sectors.

Really understanding carbon-reduction schemes can be a science in itself. But one thing is for certain: companies that have for decades been massive carbon emitters are not suddenly going to stop releasing polluting gases overnight.

According to a recent Mori poll, 80% of consumers believe that brands do not tell the whole truth when they speak about issues of corporate responsibility. Between 2006 and 2007, complaints to the ASA regarding brands being misleading on CSR rose by a factor of five. But, how should the print industry respond in the face of this headlong rush towards what has become known as ‘greenwash’ and the growing realisation that not all green claims are true?

Under pressure
Printers are facing pressure to say something about how they are behaving in an environmentally responsible manner, but surely it’s far better to say something you can actually back up than something that just isn’t true. A weak claim could fly under the radar and may be accepted in good faith by an undiscriminating buyer, but it will do more harm than good if an overstated marketing claim is subsequently shown to lack substance, or miss the point.

One of the current fads being adopted by print companies is the question of carbon footprinting and carbon neutrality. Many in the industry are making claims about their carbon impacts in their promotional literature.

The theory goes that we can somehow account for all the sources of carbon emissions associated with a product or process. Armed with a number to describe the amount of carbon generated, we can then start to drive down emissions and what we can’t avoid, we can undo, for example through an offsetting scheme such as tree planting, hence making the business ‘carbon neutral’.

The problem with this kind of analysis is that there is no simple way of doing the maths or describing how the numbers are created, at least not in a way that can easily be communicated to customers. A big question relates to how much of a company’s operations are to be included. The heavy expenditures – the energy imported to drive the presses, for example – may be an obvious thing to include, but what about the energy needed to make the paper at the mill, or fell the trees in the forest or transport the logs.

Without clarity on all of these questions, any general claim to be ‘carbon neutral’ is at best meaningless and at worst misleading. When I hear it said that the cost of achieving carbon neutrality is very low, it doesn’t fill me full of confidence that all of the impacts have been included.

Mark Line is managing director of the CSR Network

The whole issue of offsetting is also controversial. The idea is that by contributing to carbon-reduction activities elsewhere – such as a tree planting project or a renewable energy investment – the damage caused by your residual carbon can be undone. The problem is that the methods used to calculate the carbon reductions are subject to just the same issues as carbon-footprinting your operation. The offsetting industry is not regulated, so some schemes are more reliable than others.

Independent checking is one of the best ways of avoiding claims of greenwash and if you are committed to looking at your carbon footprint organisations like the Carbon Neutral Company exist, which has a well-developed measurement protocol and a certification scheme.

If you are going to invest in any environmental project, you should first make sure you understand where your biggest impacts lie and concentrate on those. As a rule of thumb, any well-thought through initiative should save resources and therefore reduce costs. This has to be a welcome thought, particularly at the moment. I’m just not so sure that we will look back in 10 years time and think that ‘going carbon neutral’ was the biggest priority.