‘State Greenwashing’: An Overlooked Phenomenon?
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Greenwashing is commonly described as ‘the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company (firm-level greenwashing) or the environmental benefits of a product or service (product-level greenwashing).’1 Based on this definition, greenwashing unfolds in the private sector—at the firm and product/service levels. The spectrum of what could amount to greenwashing in this context is wide, ranging ‘from slight exaggeration to full fabrication’ of misleading communication2 and symbolic corporate actions.3 There is no exhaustive list, but a common classification of greenwashing practices references the so-called seven ‘Sins of Greenwashing’,4 including hidden environmental tradeoffs, vague environmental claims, environmental claims lacking proof, false environmental labelling, irrelevant environmental claims that may not benefit the audience (such as for products banned by law), presenting lesser of two environmental harms, and false environmental claims.5 The type of practice that could potentially be labelled as greenwashing is thus inevitably broad. The scholarly debates to date have mainly focused on the private sector’s greenwashing practices,6 although a small number of contributions,7 and in particular a 2022 report by Lisa Benjamin and co-authors,8 suggest that greenwashing happens through entities with underlying state interests. The latter report makes a unique scholarly contribution in that it recognises direct involvement by state actors in greenwashing, thereby showing the relevance of greenwashing beyond the private sector.
Source: Journal of Environmental Law
DOI: 10.1093/jel/eqaf008
Author: Temitope Tunbi Onifade
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6959730262