Polishing the virtuous reputation of companies can take place in many areas of life and is not necessarily accompanied by actual virtue.
Most of the time we focus on greenwashingBut pretending to care about the environment is just a playoff. The catalogue besides includes social-, pink-, rainbow-, blue-, white-, sport- or varwashing, which I would collectively describe as goodwashing. And here's the first problem. If we start
relatively well identify environmental abuses, e.g. in the form of the usage of the prefix "eco" (ecogross leads here) or planting trees and calling it decarbonisation, while another practices are truly covered with a rich washing frosting. The most striking example is sportswashing
headed by a mundial in Qatar and an offensive of the arabian League. We are excited about the transfers of Ronaldo, Neymar or Karim Benzema, forgetting human rights, constantly "heating the bench" in this area of the planet and the fuel and energy industry, which, for example, thanks to the oil pact
Russia and Saudi Arabia have a crucial influence on the state of geopolitics.
Monika Drozynska, embroidery on canvas, 2023. Away from Key Challenges
Socialwashing is just as common as it is hard to recognize, and even more problem is caused by its criticism. This involves the external engagement of business, which in this respect is peculiarly popular with education and children. Courses, workshops, training, sponsorship
Vacation trips, school light crayons or retro-reflectors for pre-school children have nothing to do with the social core of business, namely workers and workers, human rights in value chains, affected communities or users and users of products and services.
The same happens in the environmental area – corporate forest cleaning should never be more crucial than energy efficiency, circularity or sewage management. Business should require “medicalisation” of engagement according to the rule “primarily
do not harm’. First companies should deal with their influence resulting from how they gain money and then to everyone else (possibly let them do both simultaneously). For the sake of clarity: I have no uncertainty that we request an engaged business,
as shown by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But we request a business that won't spoil the world.
Fake nobility, real power
Big business has powerful money for voluntary philanthropic activities and actually spends immense sums on charity. The problem is that not always the most urgent social needs go hand in hand with business interests. Then there is the classical effect of St Matthew, where grants go not to those who request them most, but to those who are already doing great. According to The Guardian, in the UK from 2007 to 2017, nearly 70% of millionaire donations (close to
4.8 billion pounds) went to higher education, of which half went to Cambridge and Oxford. Philanthropy is always recognisable, so it reflects the structures of power and business. This is peculiarly worrying in the context of the largest global donors, as indicated by the Global Policy Forum, independent
a policy monitoring body and global governance and analysis of the work of the UN. In 2015, the GPF warned that the expanding impact of global philanthropy (led e.g. by Bill and Melinda Gates,
George Soros, Charles Love, or Art Pope) can endanger democratic order. Philanthropy cannot be denied merit, but its influence is much wider and deeper than it might seem at first glance.
Systemic solution
The inequality of forces in the area of goodwashing between large business (and this is primarily the problem) and citizens and citizens is colossal. I do not want to say that we only know what we gotta know – in the planet of free access to the media and the activity of NGOs yes
It's not, or at least it doesn't gotta be. But you gotta remember that only any of us are struggling to look below the surface of smooth corporate communication. And that's absolutely understandable, you can't burden your regular life with a constant protest. Especially that frequently actual meaning
and the real impact is truly not obvious, as in the case of a network of discounts in Poland, which, alternatively of directing aid to the most deprived children, favours beneficiaries from urban centres (and the deficiencies are most hard in agrarian areas). In order to see this, however, it is essential to compare the number of municipalities in Poland with the number of shops, the abundance of regions, their needs, etc. It's painful and rather complex. The answer to this is legal protection of public opinion from goodwashing. And we already have this excellent example in the form of the forthcoming EU Green Claims Directive for communicating the environmental advantages of products and services. In the social stratum, he'll be sure
harder, but it seems that only this road can bring systemic and fast results. We will request them all the more so that sustainable improvement from year to year will become more important. In addition to companies actually performing transformations, there will be a mass of only simulating multifaceted responsibility. possibly this is an inevitable side effect on the way to a more balanced
The world.
