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April 22, 2004, Thursday
MARKING EARTH DAY
INC.
By GEOFFREY JOHNSON
BOSTON - Welcome to Earth Day 2004,
brought to you by petroleum powers, big-box developers,
old-growth loggers and chemically dependent coffee
companies trying to paint their public image green.
Let's start with Sierra Pacific, a benefactor
of northern Nevada's celebration of Earth Day. The
timber company is involved in a lawsuit aimed at weakening
the Sierra Nevada Framework, which protects the region's
forests. [Correction: Sierra Pacific Power Company, which is not a party to the aforementioned lawsuit, helped sponsor events in northern Nevada -- Sierra Pacific Industries did not.] Marathon Oil is Earth Day's sponsor down
in Houston. Behind closed doors in Texas, Marathon
worked on voluntary emissions regulations that have
helped give Houston some of the worst air quality
in the country.
The Earth Day cleanup and restoration
program held by the California State Parks Foundation
is financed by corporations with poor environmental
records in the state: ChevronTexaco, which recently
agreed to a $275 million settlement over air pollution
from five of its California refineries; Wal-Mart,
which lobbied unsuccessfully for a ballot initiative
in Inglewood to exempt a proposed supercenter from
environmental restrictions; and Pacific Gas and Electric,
whose illegal dumping of carcinogenic chemicals near
the town of Hinkley was memorialized in the movie
"Erin Brockovich."
In New York City and other areas, Starbucks
has its own events, centered around its latest slogan,
"More than our logo is green." Yet the company will
neither label nor remove genetically modified ingredients
in its products. And while it promotes its "origins"
line of coffees as a symbol of its commitment to sustainable
coffee farming, the origins varieties account for
just a sliver of the coffee that Starbucks sells.
Some might argue that there is nothing
wrong with corporations acting as a friend of Earth
Day, no matter how unfriendly their everyday operations
may be. Perhaps they are just showing solidarity with
the millions of Americans who support Earth Day each
year to combat the necessary environmental evils of
their year-round lifestyles. But the reality is that
sponsorship is often intended not as atonement for
misdeeds against nature, but as a distraction from
them.
Through concerted marketing and public
relations campaigns, these "greenwashers" attract
eco-conscious consumers and push the notion that they
don't need environmental regulations because they
are already environmentally responsible. Greenwashing
appears in misleading product labels like "all natural"
and "eco-friendly"; in television commercials showing
S.U.V.'s rolling peacefully through the wilderness;
and in the co-opting of environmental buzzwords like
"sound science" and "sustainability" - which corporate
executives render meaningless through relentless repetition.
Earth Day events are select venues for
greenwashers, allowing them to communicate with their
target audience of green consumers. They also amount
to a public relations bargain. BP spent $200 million
rebranding itself from British Petroleum to "beyond
petroleum." Major corporations pay hundreds of thousands
of dollars for environmentally themed advertisements
in high-circulation magazines like National Geographic
and Time. In contrast, at most Earth Day festivities,
a few hundred to a few thousand dollars will get a
company marquee exhibition space and a prominent place
for its logo on publicity materials.
It would be a shame to let the high-flying
banners of greenwashers distract Earth Day participants
from the environmental advocates, community associations
and government agencies that work to protect the environment
throughout the year. But it is also incumbent upon
those same groups - many of which are in the position
of choosing who sponsors these events - to adopt a
strict screening process to separate the genuinely
green businesses from the greenwashers. Finally, let's
not forget the most charitable patron of all. Earth
Day, like every day, is brought to us by the generosity
of none other than the planet itself.
Geoffrey Johnson is program coordinator of the Green Life, a nonprofit environmental group.
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