Nineteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

The recent pandemic has exacerbated the pressure on the already negatively impacted businesses and affected whole supply chains across the globe. In addition, the war in eastern Europe has significantly increased inflation to an unprecedented level. Thus, with this increased pressure and less purchasing power on the part of customers, businesses are relying extensively on Environmentalism and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria to make products more “marketable”. After episodes of false advertising, marketers have turned to ESG criteria in an attempt to make their products more “socially acceptable”. In practice, these can take the form of Greenwashing where subtle messages are inserted on products or services to market these as eco-friendly. Indeed, several claims are made on the website, on social media or directly on the product itself which can lead to confusion or simply cannot be verified with the means at hand of the customer. The present study analyses a number of local products or service in the supply chain and attempts to evaluate the extent to which marketers label their products as green or eco-friendly. Results show that greenwashing is widespread with claims that are either vague, misleading or simply insignificant. The paper proposes some recommendations for an International Green Charter (IGC-10). The IGC-10 presents an innovative and simple diagrammatic manner of distinguishing between truly green products. The bottom line is that companies become wary of presenting products or services as “green” when there are no supplemental effort being done from their part except “business as usual’.