Volkswagen committed the cardinal sin of openly lying about its sustainability in 2015. In a statement, the car company admits to using defeat devices to cheat emissions tests on some of its vehicles. This allowed the corporation to use proprietary software to detect emission tests and cut levels. They were releasing 40 times the allowed amount of nitrogen oxide pollution while consciously greenwashing their products.
Nestlé and Lay’s potato chips have also been accused of greenwashing since they contribute significantly to the world’s plastic waste problem and are benin mobile database unsustainable in their production process.
This is visible across multiple industries and ecommerce verticals: in the automobile sector, where BMW advertised a zero-carbon electric car with the option of including a gasoline engine, in the hospitality industry, where hotels excitedly advertised sustainability accolades despite the awards being for a single modest improvement in operations, and in the cosmetics industry, where firms like Tarte Cosmetics and The Body Shop have been accused of greenwashing
Because greenwashing is a marketing ploy rather than a way of taking responsibility for the environment, it has become increasingly commonplace. Green Consumers, particularly Generation Z consumers, are warier in purchasing items or services that do not take environmental concerns into consideration.
It is simply exploitation on the part of businesses, who place a high value on being environmentally conscious while failing to make the required changes to be ecologically conscious genuinely. They are completely oblivious to the potential climate-related consequences of their marketing decisions.