Greenwashing reached pandemic proportions in 2021 as businesses and governments raced to tell the world how much they care about people and planet, with varying degrees of credibility.

Every type of brand, from oil-rich governments to canned water manufacturers, tried to jump on the Covid-19-inspired sustainability bandwagon with a blizzard of net-zero, plastic-neutral, palm oil-free or gender-inclusive claims. So many companies said that sustainability is at the heart of everything they do, that they started to sound as if they were reading from the same greenwashing manual.

Levels of greenwash got so bad this year that the public relations industry launched a working group in Singapore in July to figure out how to control it. Six months later, nothing has emerged from the Public Relations & Communications Association of Southeast Asia, and the working group is itself starting to feel a bit greenwash-y.

In 2020, Eco-Business counted eight examples of brands called out for making sustainability claims that did not stand up to scrutiny. This year, we have found 11, detailed in the following list of dubious claims and marketing spin.

Read the full article about greenwashing brands by Robin Hicks at Eco-Business.