So we’re starting a new feature on the Understory: the Greenwash of the Week. If you’re not familiar with the term, which comes from “whitewash,” it refers to companies trying to make their products or activities appear environmentally friendly even when they are not. It didn’t take long for corporate PR departments to figure out that it is a lot cheaper to tell people that their practices are environmentally sound than to actually change their behavior (by way of illustration, take a look at this handy explanatory cartoon).

This week’s greenwash? Subaru’s farcical new ad about their “green” plant in Indiana, which they describe as a “role model for the environment” that has been “designated a wildlife habitat.” If that’s not enough for you, check out the longer version here (listen to how the actor says the word “rabbits.”)

Now, first of all, it turns out that the certification scheme that they used to get that designation, the NWF’s backyard habitat program, while laudable, isn’t exactly what I’d call “rigorous.” If you’d like to get your yard certified, fill out the form on this page. (Bonus: see if you can spot any actual wildlife in the Google Earth images of the Subaru plant).

Second, and more importantly, Subaru is a car manufacturer. The plant in which they build their cars, while not insignificant, pales in comparison to the fact that they build cars at all. They don’t make plug-in hybrids, or hybrids of any kind. As this discussion over at Switchboard points out, they reclassified much of their fleet as light trucks to escape emissions standards. The very nature of their product supports unsustainable lifestyles.

Diverting attention from their environmental impact as a whole to the plant where they make their cars is a classic greenwash, and it’s our first Greenwash of the Week.

I’ve been laughing all morning over Weyerhaeuser’s new website GrowingIdeas.com. It’s comically evil—and illustrates better than we ever could just how out-of-touch they are with reality.

I clicked on “What Can a Tree Be?”, wondering why being a key part of a diverse ecosystem, like providing shelter for animals, preventing erosion and producing oxygen was evidently not good enough. More »

Good news. Today, a US District Court in Seattle stopped Weyerhaeuser from logging in endangered Spotted Owl habitat in western Washington (AP Story link).

Frequent readers of the Understory will remember our report on the how the suit filed by Washington Forest Law Center late last year could expose the forest industry’s “Sustainable Forestry Initiative” greenwashing scheme.

Weyerhaeuser trotted out the Spotted Owl as proof of the program’s green credentials in 2003. According to its press release touting the “rigorous requirements” of the SFI, “Some of the forestry practices employed by Weyerhaeuser that meet certification standards include… special measures to protect rare, threatened or endangered species such as… the northern spotted owl in Oregon and Washington.”

Some standard! You’d think a “bold approach to sustainable forest management”–as SFI describes itself–would at least keep its participants from breaking the law.

We hear that SFI was waiting on the court to decide whether to kick Weyerhaeuser out. Considering that the company’s CEO sits on the SFI board however, we’re not holding our breath.