The Emperor’s New Clothes is a story that has such universal resonance that almost every civilisation and every epoch in human history has a version. Indian, Persian, Spanish and German folklore include variations dating back a thousand years before Hans Christian Andersen included it in his Fairy Tales for Children in 1837. Only a few months ago two important things happened which suggest we have still not learned its lesson.
First, FIFA was told to stop making the claim that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was ‘carbon neutral’. The Swiss Fairness Commission upheld allegations that these claims were either misleading or plain false, because, for example, FIFA’s calculations were based on the assumption that all trips to the event were one-way, ignored the impact of building 7 new stadiums for the event, focusing only on the sustainable energy used in those stadiums, and used investment in a solar power plant that was both profitable (and therefore going to get funding anyway) and unregistered. Carbon Market Watch estimates at more than half of the 3.6M tonnes of CO2 generated by Qatar22 (a bigger footprint in four weeks than the annual emissions generated by many of the competing nations) was not genuinely offset.
Secondly, a council in South Melbourne was filmed practicing “aspirational recycling”: collecting recycling in the same wagons as other waste and sending it all to landfill. Turns out there has been no clarity around what materials are truly recyclable, leading to contamination and rendering the entire recycling process ineffective. Sickening news for residents and businesses who were duped into thinking they were saving the planet by earnestly sorting their cardboard from their soft plastics.
When it comes to comforting sustainability solutions like offsetting and recycling, then, it seems The Emperor of Greenwashing has no clothes. If we want to feel better about flying overseas for three days, paying for some saplings to be planted won’t cut it. And we can disabuse ourselves of any notion that we can recycle our way out of the climate emergency.
So what should we do instead? The waste hierarchy places waste reduction at the top, followed by recycling as a distant last resort.
At Active, the work we do to keep product out of landfill and give it a second life in new markets, we believe, gives us strong green credentials. After all, we estimate we saved over 14,000 tonnes of food waste from destruction last year, just as we have done for decades.
But we’ve been as guilty as anyone in using carbon offsetting and recycling as panaceas. And recent exposure on greenwashing prompts us to ask some difficult questions.
We need to know that by remarketing product which would otherwise be destroyed, we are not simply delaying the environmental problem, kicking a recycled can down the road slowly towards landfill, and claiming that this is a heroic act. We are not clear enough on what happens to products once we have remarketed them – their impact on the environment could be even greater.
Internationally, Active is looking to Australia to lead this charge. Last week our Managing Director Sarah Keith addressed the global Active community, presenting a model in which our commercial partners are guaranteed 100% sustainable remarketing of their products. Sarah recommends that we work only with those suppliers who have a credible green value proposition. And as the advertising industry examines how to move towards carbon neutrality, she asked if we should go further, supporting media vendors and channels with the lowest climate impact.
None of this is comfortable, simple or easy, and there are genuine commercial risks. But if we don’t hold ourselves to account on these issues, we’ll continue to believe we’re draped proudly in green robes when, like FIFA, we haven’t got a stitch on.
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