Danny ChenGreenwashing is a continuously evolving topic. In 2025, let’s explore some of the new terms that are used to describe the greenwashing campaign.
These terms help stakeholders to reflect on the greenwashing topic from different perspectives and cultivate the reader’s independent thinking of the greenwashing topic.
#1 Green Crowding: If sustainability policies are being developed, it is likely that the group will move at the speed of the slowest. In the past, businesses would form various climate alliances, working groups, and networks that advocated for climate action. Despite these campaigns being good, the participating organizations themselves often take very limited action, and the campaigns are more about marketing for public relationships.
R1: When advocating changes, leading by example is one of the best long-term actions. However, it does not mean the climate alliance, working group, and network is a greenwashing campaign. It just shows that these participated organizations put more resources into public relationship promotion instead of solving the important climate problem.
#2 Green Rinsing: A business regularly changing its ambitious mid-term climate targets but dynamically changing targets every few years before they achieve any of them.
R2: A rolling-period performance review is often adopted in the business. Each business often has different degrees of conflict of interests with different priorities when it comes to their mid-term goals. When other business priorities come first with potential conflicts of interest to promote positive climate impacts, the progress is understandably slow and may not meet the original aspiration. In the transition phase, where most businesses have never faced the climate transition before, missing mid-term climate targets is somewhat understandable. Nevertheless, changing the climate targets may not be the best action to solve the problem gap.
#3 Green Hushing: A business under-reports its positive climate efforts.
R3: The original purpose of greenwashing was to prevent companies from misleading the general public about the actual facts and the effort required. However, as the industry evolves with more stakeholder engagement, greenwashing now covers a broader scope to protect consumer rights. Instead of running into unnecessary customer legal disputes, it is understandable that some businesses would rather claim less than more.
