Ýêîíîìè÷åñêèå
íàóêè/10. Ýêîíîìèêà ïðåäïðèÿòèÿ
Vlasenko N.A.
Odessa National Economic
University
Greenwashing
in travel and tourism industry
Seems like anything and everything
has “gone green” these days. Airlines, car companies, retailers, restaurants —
heck, even networks and stadiums. Thankfully, more often than not, that’s a
good thing. It’s only bad if it’s greenwashing — that’s bad for the
environment, consumers, and, ultimately, for the very businesses doing the
greenwashing — whether they mean to or not.
History.
The word “greenwashing” officially entered the Oxford
English Dictionary in 1999, the definition of “disinformation that is disseminated
by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public
image”. Nowadays it has become an instantly recognizable term.
It’s greenwashing when a company or
organization spends more time and money claiming to be “green” through
advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that
minimize environmental impact. It’s whitewashing, but with a green brush.
Or a hotel chain that calls itself
“green” because it allows guests to choose to sleep on the same sheets and
reuse towels, but actually does very little to save water and energy where it
counts — on its grounds, with its appliances and lighting, in its kitchens, and
with its vehicle fleet.
Why is greenwashing a problem?
Being “green” is good until it becomes a greenwashing.
Speaking about travel and tourism industry we can mark out next. The majority of travel businesses are small and medium size enterprises,
but collectively they are energy, carbon, water and waste intensive, while mass
tourism is highly disruptive to the natural environment.
The
causes for greenwashing in travel are no different than in other sectors.
Businesses run the risk of falling into the greenwash trap while attempting to
increase sales to create differentiation in a highly commoditized travel
market with an increasingly desegregated supply chain; when it seeks to enhance
its reputation by demonstrating environmental stewardship for both its
operations at home and in destinations, etc.
Let’s see how
greenwashing affects different aspects:
Environment: At its very worst, greenwashing is bad for the
environment because it can encourage consumers en masse to do the opposite of
what’s good for the environment. At its most benign, greenwashing makes claims
that are neither good nor bad for the environment — it’s just making green
claims to sell more stuff.
Consumers: We’ve all heard of lemon laws and
bait-and-switch. Nobody likes to be taken advantage of, especially when it
comes to money. So, the next time you see an environmental claim, ask yourself
about “The Truth, the Whole Truth, and
Nothing But the Truth” before you buy. The
last thing you want to do is spend money on a product or service you believe is
doing right by the environment, but in reality is not — or not as much as the ad
might lead you to believe.
Businesses: Smart businesses are finding out that doing
right by the environment actually does increase profitability in many cases.
With so many easy ways for businesses to reduce their environmental impact or
improve their products and processes, it’s just sad when they don’t. It’s even
worse when they don’t make changes and claim to be a green company just to push
their agenda. When properly trained, consumers see right through this “green
screen.” Then greenwashing backfires, hurting the company’s reputation and,
ultimately, their sales.
It’s clear that sustainability can’t be
temporary. It was how we lived before the industrial age, and how we need to
live to endure. “Green will be the only way to survive,” says Hugh Hough, partner
and president of Green Team, a New York-based advertising and communications
agency.
Feel the difference.
Not all eco-holidays are everything
they're cracked up to be. The popular South American ecotourism website planeta.com cites John Noble, editor of Lonely Planet's
Mexico guidebook, who said, "What you call 'ecotourism' in Latin America,
in Europe we call a 'walk in the country'".
Others take a harsher line, labelling
faux ecotourism “greenwashing”. And it’s hardly something new. During the
United Nations' International Year of Ecotourism in 2002, Patricia Barnett of Tourism Concern said the ecotourism label could be "used by
anyone at anytime for anything from a small-scale locally-run rainforest lodge
where the money goes to support a local community, to a large, luxury,
foreign-owned resort which has little community involvement and uses masses of
natural resources”.
The hijacking of the "eco"
label by tourism businesses riding cheaply on the green wave means that
nowadays you’re unlikely to see the word ecotourism used in British tour
operators' brochures. Harold Goodwin, professor of responsible tourism management at Leeds
Metropolitan University told, “Ecotourism has no marketing utility because
people just don’t believe it anymore”.
As a positive example we can name
hotel chain Scandic, one of the
champions of a more sustainable hotel industry, which has refurbished over
10,000 eco-rooms with almost 100% recyclable material.
How to
find out???
So how can you distinguish between
the green and the greenwash? Often a hotel’s most efficacious environmental
practices will go unnoticed to the casual eye of a holidaymaker – and even the
most motivated green traveller is unlikely to inspect a hotel’s waste
management system after ordering the morning paper.
Jane Ashton, head of corporate social
responsibility at First Choice (one of the travel giants helping FTO) said:
“Travellers are becoming more interested in green products so it’s becoming
increasingly important to define what being green actually means.”
One of the largest and best-known green tourism
certification schemes is Green Globe.
Closer to home, the UK’s Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS) is leading the way in certifying domestic
green accommodation. Its website provides a map search facility for over 1,000
places to stay, from small B&Bs to luxury five-star hotels and visitor
centres in England and Scotland. The scheme requires owners to provide details
on over 160 criteria, ranging from energy, waste and local transport, and sends
out a qualified environmental auditor to visit each property before awarding
them bronze, silver or gold. Owners can only apply for membership if their
properties already qualify for one of the UK’s quality assurance schemes, such
as the AA, Scottish Tourist Board or VisitBritain’s "Quality and
Tourism".
The Green Tourism Business Scheme is
a member of an association of European eco-labels known as the Voluntary Initiative for Sustainability in
Tourism, which is trying to provide a common
framework for all certification schemes to work to. Other members include The Green Key, which has certified properties in France, Sweden,
Greenland and Estonia, and Legambiente, which has certified over 100 places in Italy.
One of the millennium development goals to be achieved
by 2012, according to UNWTO, is to ensure environmental sustainability. That’s why,
as interest in sustainability increases, businesses must take the lead to
ensure the accuracy and verifiability of their environmental claims.
Literature:
1. http://www.unwto.org/tourism&mdgsezine/ - Tourism and millennium development goals
2. http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Bu110709too_green.asp – Too green for comfort