Asia Pulp and Paper is perhaps the world's largest rainforest destroyer

As Rainforest Action Network (RAN) continues our negotiations with The Walt Disney Company to secure a comprehensive paper policy that would exclude rainforest destruction from the company’s products, we are also keeping our eyes on the real prize: reforming logging giant and Indonesian rainforest destroyer Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).

APP has been called “one of the most destructive companies on the planet” by UK Guardian reporter George Monbiot, and now the shadowy logging behemoth is busy pursuing aggressive expansion plans into North American markets, including buying up a slew of paper mills in Canada. While RAN has been tracking the company’s trail of destruction for years, the first time many Americans heard of APP was in a front page New York Times piece last March.

RAN and our allies have been working hard to make sure it would not be the last time Americans hear about APP and its destructive ways. Over the past years, a steady stream of major corporate customers have dropped their contracts with APP, including major US book publishers Scholastic, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster; leading toy companies Mattel, Hasbro, and Lego; and fashion giants Gucci and Tiffany and Co. As the APP brand becomes ever more closely associated with the rainforest destruction and human rights abuses the company causes, more and more corporate customers are realizing the danger of doing business with such a toxic supplier.

As public awareness rises about the massive scale and reckless pace of logging by APP and its subsidiaries, the company has been forced to respond. But, instead of acknowledging and addressing the social conflict and deforestation it is responsible for, APP has chosen to invest heavily in public relations firms to polish its image and distract consumers from the growing controversy.

The result is a sophisticated, Orwellian, internationally orchestrated effort of smoke and mirrors that refines the old art of corporate greenwashing to masterpiece levels. When the World Wildlife Fund called APP’s logging one of the leading threats to the survival of the Sumatran Tiger, APP’s brazen response was to run ads in the NYT claiming “APP Cares” and is working hard to protect tiger habitat.

There is simply too much shocking hypocrisy and doublespeak in APP’s recent playbook to cover adequately here, so interested readers will need to stay tuned for more to come from RAN on this matter — but if you have the stomach for it, this TV ad from last summer is particularly nauseating.

APP’s approach to infiltrating North American markets has been to become adept at operating under the guise of a wide array of innocuous-seeming front companies that shroud the company’s products from its contaminated brand name. These shell companies, with names like Eagle Ridge Paper, Global Paper Solutions Inc., Solaris Paper, and Mercury Paper, are expanding throughout the US and Canada, and many customers have no idea they are actually buying from APP.

RAN looks forward to the day when accountability and socially and environmentally responsible sourcing replace today’s subterfuge and false claims of sustainability. We will be counting on you to help us get there.

But this year, a wide variety of activists, in B.C. and beyond, are reminding us that the 2010 Vancouver Olympics aren’t all fun and games. In fact, they’re resulting in huge developments on unceded First Nations land, massive spending on hyper-militarized security, and displacement of poor people and increased homelessness in Vancouver.

And, of course, it’s an opportunity for some good ol’-fashioned corporate PR. Companies from around the world with gruesome environmental and human rights track records – like Dow, Coca-Cola, and General Electric – are lining up to spend millions on funding the Olympics and sprucing up their tarnished images.

And the lead sponsor of the Olympic torch run: Royal Bank of Canada, the ATM for the Alberta tar sands. In fact, their website for the torch run calls on people across Canada to “make a pledge” to “make a better Canada,” and touts RBC’s “Blue Water Pledge” to “support watershed protection” – a little bit hypocritical, given that RBC has pledged $3.8 billion in financing to tar sands companies in the last six months alone.

So a group of folks in Vancouver decided to call RBC on their greenwashing. They issued a callout last week – endorsed by RAN - calling for protests at RBC branches across Canada every Friday at noon, to protest RBC’s attempts to use their Olympic funding to greenwash their role as the world’s biggest financier of the tar sands.

This past Friday – on incredibly short notice – protestors in Toronto, Vancouver, and Edmonton took their message to their local RBC branches.

In Toronto, the ever-amazing RAN Toronto set up a tar sands cafe: they served up delicious tar sands tailing ponds “tea” to customers and passers-by outside RBC’s Yonge St. branch. They also went inside and offered “tea” to the branch employees, who politely declined.

In Vancouver, a group of concerned people went to RBC’s Vancouver headquarters, and passed out a brand-new flyer about RBC’s role in funding the Olympics and destroying the tar sands. (You can download the flyer here.)

And our reports indicate that there was a protest at an RBC branch in Edmonton, too! (Of course, the coolest part about decentralized days of action like this is that it’s entirely possible that actions happened that we didn’t even know about.)

This was a great start to the campaign – three protests across Canada, only three days after the callout was issued! But this is only the beginning – after all, if RBC is raking in millions in profits from its financing of tar sands companies, then we’re going to have to make a lot of noise before they start to listen.

So email 2010corporatecampaign [at] gmail.com to find out if there’s a protest happening soon near you – and if there isn’t, you can go ahead and organize one! (And it doesn’t have to be on a Friday at noon, either – and if you’d like help organizing a protest, you can email us at answers [at] ran.org.)

RBC: MAKE A PLEDGE: STOP FUNDING THE TAR SANDS!

So RAN Toronto crashed the party, and reminded everybody that building an environmentally-sound headquarters while serving as the ATM for the tar sands industry is the crassest form of greenwashing.

Outside the building, the RAN Toronto crew held up banners, handed out pamphlets, and informed journalists and RBC employees heading to the event that RBC has extended and underwritten $19.5 billion in financing to tar sands companies since 2007 alone – more than any other bank in the world. (Much to the chagrin of building security – who watched and fumed from inside the lobby.

And before the protest started, two super-sneaky RAN Toronto activists – dressed to a T, and posing as interns in RBC’s Environmental Affairs department – snuck into the event on the 41st floor of the building, and handed out pamphlets to journalists and other attendees, describing a fake new RBC greenwashing program – “an important advertising campaign to convince you that we share your values and should be your destination for Sustainable BankingTM.” We thought the brochures were quite funny – but unfortunately RBC’s security didn’t share our sense of humor, and kicked the two activists out.

This is just one of many RAN Toronto actions against RBC: this crew confronted RBC CEO Gordon Nixon at a financial summit in September, held a die-in at an RBC branch opening in August, appealed to Gordon Nixon’s wife to help us stop the tar sands with a protest and banner hang in July, and confronted RBC executives at a conference at the University of Toronto in June. So maybe it isn’t terribly surprising that RBC security was beefed up for the unveiling of their new headquarters.

It should be clear to RBC by this point that this kick-ass band of rabble-rousers isn’t going to stop until RBC finally comes to their senses, stops their pitiful little greenwashing efforts, and starts taking true environmental leadership by ending funding for the tar sands.

Go RAN Toronto!

But never fear: there’s a “grassroots movement” afoot to protect Big Oil’s American right to profit off of environmental destruction!

Recently, Greenpeace leaked a memo from that valiant defender of the oil industry’s rights, the American Petroleum Institute, to “API Member Company CEO/Executives.” The memo showed that a grassroots movement is afoot – led by API’s Executive Committee, with help from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and “a highly experienced events management company” – to fight for Big Oil’s right to profits! This grassroots citizen-led movement (after all, the API are citizens, right??) will be organizing “Energy Citizen rallies” in 20 states across the country!

The objective of these rallies is to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy and to aim a loud message at those states’ U.S. Senators to avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill and the Obama Administration’s tax increases on our industry. … It’s important that our views be heard.

That’s right! After all, spending $700 million on lobbying over ten years – and billions more on advertising – can only get you so much publicity. It’s time for ordinary citizens to stand up and publicly demand justice for the oil industry!

And how will API build this movement? Why, by using all-American grassroots organizing, of course.

The measure of success for these events will be the diversity of the participants expressing the same message, as well as turnouts of several hundred attendees. In the 11 states with an industry core, our member company local leadership—including your facility manager’s commitment to provide significant attendance—is essential to achieving the participation level that Senators cannot ignore. In addition, please include all vendors, suppliers, contractors, retirees and others who have an interest in our success. …

We need two actions from each participating company:

Please provide us with the name of one central coordinator for your company’s involvement in the rallies. …

Please indicate to your company leadership your strong support for employee participation in the rallies. … Once the list of venues and exact rally dates are determined, we will contact your company’s coordinator to distribute the information internally and to coordinate transportation to the venues, if required, for your employees.

Look out, Big Green bureaucrats! A new grassroots movement is forming – and they won’t stop fighting for justice until they end discrimination against the oil industry!

She looked at it for about three seconds and told me “that’s greenwashing.” She explained the word to me and although I was sad to see my evidence of the mainstream adoption of environmentalism debunked, I realized for the first time that in a lot of ways claiming to “go green” when you’re not can be worse than just doing bad stuff in the first place.

Well, I’ve obviously come a long way since then and you may have already seen one of our “Greenwash of the Week” posts.

You’d think I would be pretty aware of the scope and quantity of greenwashing out there. I thought I was too.

But this past weekend I did something I don’t often do: I watched cable news for a few hours non-stop. And I was, to put it mildly, surprised at just how much of the advertising was straight-up greenwashing.

Most of it was from industry front-groups. The oil and natural gas industry, Chevron, a major freight train operator called CSX, the coal industry, chemical producers, and a few more I didn’t write down.

If you get your news from, say, the news channels, you’d probably think that most of America’s biggest industries are spending most of their time trying to figure out how to protect the environment and make us all happier and safer.

I mean, that’s what their ads say. Not one ad touting anything like “gasoline, because you have to get to work” or “plastic, more convenient than reusing stuff.”

No, the message is always the same: in these ads the solution to the problems we face is to simply let the markets run their course, keep up our wasteful consumption, and trust that the companies who caused so many of these problems in the first place are working hard to develop and sell us wizz-bang technological solutions.

What scares me most, however, isn’t that their message is dishonest, or manipulative, or anything like that. What scares me is the scale of these campaigns.

I can’t help but think of the millions of young people out there who genuinely care about the future of this planet, like I did, see these ads, like I did, but whose parents aren’t environmental activists who know how to explain greenwashing to a ten year-old.

Look, these ads are slick, powerful, inspiring, and emotional. And they’re everywhere. I know that most folks don’t trust these companies and can see through the most flagrant claims, but I’m also pretty sure that some of their messaging is getting through.

My guess is that’s exactly their strategy: just overwhelm us with the message and hope that some tiny part of it sticks. Like, maybe, “clean coal” or “oil is the future” or even just “technology is the answer.”

So how to we stop them? I’m not sure I have the whole answer to that, but I think it has a lot to do with building a culture of skepticism towards their claims and a much broader and deeper awareness about what real solutions look like.

Anyone else have ideas?

This sort of online marketing is a real priority for them. From the Detroit News:

Two dozen company executives conducted chats on the site last month, including GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner. “We give a lot of importance to Web sites,” Wagoner wrote. “In fact, we have shifted a significant amount of our marketing spend to digital marketing. We’re also devoting a lot of our communications resources to social media.”

GM has also routinely invited bloggers to company press events and to meet with top executives.

Clay Voorhes, an assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University, said the effort by GM is “part of a new push for authenticity by companies.”

A recent article in the Globe and Mail (not online) seemed to buy into the idea that GM was really trying for “authenticity.” The reality, however, is that these companies are making a push for the appearance and aesthetic of authenticity, not for authenticity itself. When the latter rears its sometimes-ugly head, they back off. In another article from the Financial Times, a spokesman states that their goal is “credibility:”

GM set up the website www.gmnext.com only last month as a springboard for ideas on future automotive technologies. The site was immediately bombarded by the carmaker’s critics. Posts included pictures of protestors at the Detroit motor show calling on the industry to combat climate change and to create more environmentally friendly jobs.

…

“We want to get as many voices in this debate as possible,” a company spokesman said. He added that: “We can’t just pick the friendly questions if we want this to be a credible conversation.”

So here’s the question for GM’s greenwashing crew: can they allow enough public feedback to appear “credible” while still avoiding uncomfortable criticism from knowledgeable, organized environmentalists? Here’s a hint: it might require making real, substantive changes outside of the PR department.

The Detroit News covered the event, featuring GM executive Brent Dewar “answering” questions from more than 65 RAN supporters (I use scare quotes because of the large number of questions he ignored and the indirect responses he gave to the most pointed inquiries).

The article quotes Clay Voorhes, an assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University saying that the effort by GM is “part of a new push for authenticity by companies.”

Of course, it would be more accurate to describe it as a “push for the appearance of authenticity” because the corporate world isn’t really trying to genuinely communicate in an honest way with people. Instead, they believe that if people think a particular corporation is more “genuine” or “authentic” then those people will buy more of whatever the corporation is selling.

Nonetheless, I think it is important for us to recognize that the meme of “authenticity” is taking hold in corporate marketing.

What I loved about this series of actions connected to gmnext.com, was that RAN supporters stood up, together, to challenge that meme. They sent a very clear message to the company that people aren’t just going to accept declarations of “authenticity” by corporations without serious actions and commitments on the corporation’s part behind those declarations.

Otherwise, we’re going to call it like we see it. And what we see is more corporate greenwashing.

On that note, I’ll wrap up by sharing my other favorite part of this whole experience. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a giant company use the term “greenwashing” in their own marketing. But, when I went to the chat, there it was. Looks like we won the framing battle on this one.

We posted pictures of student activists at the Detroit auto show protesting automakers on the site and thousands of RAN supporters flooded GM with comments supporting the students and asking the giant automaker to take real steps, not just greenwashing PR, on climate and green jobs.

Within a matter of hours GM shut down comments on the site.

Then, Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications Technology for GM, came to our blog and wrote that they turned of the interactive features because “‘dialogue’ does not mean ‘open to demagogues.’” One of his employees–who it seems didn’t realize that her IP address identified her as part of the GM PR machine–going by the name “betty” also commented on our blog and started a lively conversation.

I know, hilarious.

Anyhow, Mr Barger also promised that they “are planning to have an open forum — possibly even a series of them – in the coming weeks where we will address green jobs, the quest for 100 mpg cars and other pressing environmental issues.”

Well, to give him credit, GM has announced the first of those forums.

Mr. Barger left a note on our blog and everyone who left a comment on the site got an email today announcing that:

“GM executive Brent Dewar will be on hand to answer your questions about GM’s environmental policies and initiatives. The chat will take place Wednesday, February 6 from noon to 1 p.m. EST. To access the chat, go to http://www.gmnext.com/LiveChat.aspx and register with your e-mail address. On the day of the chat, click the “Enter Chat” button and join the conversation.”

Great! Let’s ask some questions! I’ll be in the chat and I hope to see lots of RAN supporters there asking GM why they are doing so little about global warming, green jobs and social justice.

Don’t expect a lot of candor or honesty, we are, afterall, dealing with the PR apparatus of one of the biggest corporations in the world. Instead, I expect more of the same–greenwashing slogans and little real action.

To mark its 100th anniversary two weeks ago, General Motors launched a new interactive website, gmnext, where the public was encouraged to submit photos, videos and comments in order to help the company answer questions like “how should GM best address global energy issues we’ll face for the next 100 years?”

Yeah, it’s typical corporate greenwashing, but with a new “web 2.0″ spin where the company pretends to care what the public thinks.

So last week we posted photos on the site of student activists in Michigan protesting at the Detroit auto show. Then we asked our supporters to go comment on the site and tell GM what the public really thinks about how the automakers should address global warming and energy issues.

GM’s response? They turned off public comments.

So much for the fancy interactive that GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said “encourages open and honest interaction.”

I guess it wasn’t really public discussion the company wanted. Big surprise.

One of GM’s PR flacks claimed that they were shutting off the interactive features because “we have no intention of letting a vocal set of activists highjack the conversation with invective and dogmatic misinformation.”

What were these comments filled with “invective and dogmatic misinformation” actually like?

“GM needs to stop thinking of “green” as an advertising term and nothing more. Really committing to better gas mileage and alternative fuels–NOT including ethanol, which is not environmentally sound–will be better publicity for you than mere sloganeering.”

“Since the most famous quote from Ioccoca, “How much clean air do we really need?”, the auto industry has let the public down. Most citizens believe that the auto industry has it’s hands in the oil pockets as well. Whether that is true or not, we will never know. What we do know is that the “green” options are simply not good enough. We don’t wish to see the auto industry pat themselves on the back for what we perceive as a poor job. It is just not good enough yet. This group pushes so that the industry doesn’t stop working on it. No pats are deserved yet. Cutting emissions is great, but we want better. So less patting on the back and more work is what they want.. I have to fully agree. What the production of these batteries do to the enviroment is disgusting. We have a long way to go. No kudo’s until this job is done and done responsibly. Ethanol is not a solution either. It takes just as much energy to produce as oil.. so where is the benefit, and now people are starving due to the lack of corn. Iceland uses meat that is unconsumable. Why are we not? A better job has been done by other countries.. step up to the world plate please and stop patting..”

Sounds less like dogma than clear well-reasoned comments by people who care.

Of course, GM is shutting down the interactive features of their new marketing campaign because the comments they got aren’t in line with their branding, not because they are inaccurate, mean-spirited, or dogmatic.

My take: I think that as more and more companies move towards trying to use fake “web 2.0″ “interactive” features to promote their greenwashing, we’re going to keep on them and show through our actions that the public isn’t going to let them get away with anything short of real action. Greenwashing on the web isn’t going to be easy for them.

So I say thank you to everyone who helped shut down one of the biggest greenwashing campaigns by one of the most powerful corporations on earth.

Amazing, huh? The Malaysian Palm Oil Board’s mission is to “enhance the well-being of the Malaysian oil palm industry through research, development and excellent services”… which is exactly what they do… even if it means ignoring all facts.

According to the video, a monocrop palm oil plantation is “essentially a planted forest”. Well, to me, a forest implies more than one kind of tree, the ability to support a variety of wildlife, and net carbon storage– all of which a palm oil plantation fails to do.

The best part of the video, I’d say, is where they list the environmental attributes of the palm oil industry. Did they mention the clearing of the rainforest, the burning of that forest to clear the land, the resulting erosion and water pollution? Nope. Actually, they claim that palm oil plantations do the opposite.

The question then stands: Have these people ever visited a palm oil plantation, or heck, even spoken to a person who has ever visited a palm oil plantation?

Cause I’ve visited plenty, and I can tell them, they are all sorts of wrong.

Its scary that these that the Malaysian Oil Palm Council and Oil Palm Board can put together these advertisements and share them with the world. Its scary to think that people might actually believe them. More incentive to spread the word about palm oil, and for right now, take advantage of the only thing that these advertisements are good for, and have a good laugh.

It’s a 2005 recipe to sell “clean coal” from General Electric’s “Eco-magination.”

1. Dress some super-models up like coal miners

2. Oil their bodies up and set them loose in an underground mine

3. Co-opt a traditional anti-corporate anti-mining folksong, Sixteen Tons.

4. Throw in some lines like: “Now, thanks to emissions-reducing technologies from GE Energy, harnessing the power of coal is looking more beautiful, every day.”

And viola, you get this General Electric “clean coal” video:

Eco-magination, my ass!

What makes the new card so special?

Well, everytime you make a purchase you earn points, but instead of using the points to get airline tickets or electronics, MBNA buys carbon offsets.

The more stuff you buy, the more offsets MBNA buys.

So basically the message is: buying things is really good for the earth! Want a new riding lawnmower? Charge it and don’t worry about the impact on the climate!

Just keep on shopping!

And exactly how much goes towards helping offset emissions? According MBNA, one half of one percent of your total purchases.

In case you’re keeping track, that’s 99.5% going to Bank of America, one of the biggest financial backers of the coal industry and .5% to planting trees.

And that doesn’t even mention the much deeper point that over consumption itself is driving the climate crisis in the first place and that shopping is not the answer. (follow that last link for an interesting article on Alternet today)

Final point, let’s not fail to notice that MBNA itself won’t even stand behind the offest program it is trying to promote. Check out the small print on the card’s website: “MBNA does not guarantee the overall effect of the carbon offset purchases to actually reduce carbon emissions.”

So, for being a leading funder of coal, among other destructive industries, and at the same time trying to get Canadians to buy more stuff they don’t need while pretending to address global warming, Bank of America and it’s subsidiary MBNA win this week’s Greenwash of the Week Award.

Congrats.

Oh, and I had a great time shutting down some B of A ATMs today, check out the pics on flickr.

The basic idea is that they give you city and you get to decide how to provide the energy for all of the essential products we need every day, our cars, and our homes and businesses.

Your choices include solar, wind, petroleum, coal, and nuclear power among others and your choices are evaluated on their impact on the economy, the environment, and security. Sounds good right? Most greenwash campaigns do . . . at first.

The biggest catch here is that you must include petroleum in your plan. In fact, it is the only fuel source we can’t do without according to Chevron. Well, I guess that shouldn’t come as too much a surprise considering the source. Plus, at some level the basic idea that we can’t simply stop using petroleum tomorrow is correct. But this game doesn’t stop there.

Besides discounting the possibility of using solar power to get more than 25% of our energy needs due to cost, assuming that geographic and “other constraints” make wind power an unrealistic primary choice, and failing to even begin to include peak oil in the analysis, the game insists that we will need to rely on petroleum as a fuel source through at least 2030 and that we will have abundant supply to do so. Both ideas are highly suspect.

The whole game is framed to look like it is simply being practical and using basic economics to figure out the impacts that different energy sources could have on our society. But whenever you try to use more alternative power the game comes up with some vague excuse why it won’t work simply stating that the option is “cost prohibitive” or “inefficient.”

Um, ok. Sorry I asked.

The most upsetting aspect of the game, however, isn’t about the promotion of any particular energy source. It’s the fact that Chevron assumes energy use will just keep on growing forever. I guess they have to say that. If they say energy use could conceivably go down, their shareholders might freak out. Even if you choose “aggressive” energy conservation measures (note the framing) the game still assumes major increases in energy consumption in perpetuity.

In fact, this theme runs throughout Chevron’s “will you join us” greenwashing ad campaign.The real message of the ads is that consumption can’t be stopped:

Personally, I think we need to take the notion of reducing our energy consumption seriously. A 50% increase in the number of cars by 2030 is not inevitable. In fact, the very idea that our consumption will just keep on growing forever is at the heart of so many of the challenges we face right now. Behind global warming, behind mass extinction, behind a water crisis, is the fact that our culture organizes itself around consumption and we measure so much of both our collective wellbeing and our individual wellbeing by looking at how much we are able to consume.

So I offer Chevron our Greenwash of the Week award not just for glossing over serious alternatives to oil, not only for coupling destructive business practices with an ambivalent message about the environment, but for doing all that while consistently pushing the message that no matter what happens energy consumption will just keep growing forever.

This week’s greenwash is a double-whammy: greenwash meets astro-turf. If you’re not familiar with that last term, it refers to a “grassroots” organization that’s actually the phony creation of a powerful, moneyed interest group.

As reported by the good people over at PR Watch and the Asbury Park Press, Exelon, a New Jersey nuclear power provider, paid to lobbyists to set up a front group called the “New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition.” The mission of the group was to support nuclear in general and license renewal for an aging local plant in particular. Exelon also funded a “study” on the supposedly high cost of shutting down the plant. From PR Watch:

The coalition will “advocate for nuclear energy and, more specifically, a 20-year license extension for the aging Oyster Creek plant” in Lacey, N.J. However, “the lobbyists neglected to point out they are being paid by Exelon Corp., Oyster Creek’s owner. There also was no mention of that fact on the coalition’s Web site until a news story about their being front men for Exelon appeared in Friday’s Asbury Park Press.” Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “is expected to reach a decision on relicensing by January,” reasons the paper, “much of the lobbyists’ energy will be directed at the decision-makers themselves.” Judging by a press release, one of NJ ACRE’s arguments is that “the loss of Oyster Creek and the need to replace its electricity in the face of steadily rising demand would cause significant economic hardship.” The release says shutting down Oyster Creek would cost $190 million in increased energy prices and $126 million in lost “economic activity,” citing a study funded by Exelon.

For more on the trouble with nuclear power, check out Toben’s post from last month. RAN recently signed on to this simple statement about nuclear power, reproduced in its entirety below:

“We do not support construction of new nuclear reactors as a means of
addressing the climate crisis. Available renewable energy and energy
efficiency technologies are faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner
strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power.”

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.

Well, today on Alternet I saw an outstanding article by Glenn Hurowitz about all of these so-called “green” initiatives and their destructive consequences. The article, originally from The American Prospect does about a good a job as possible connecting all of RAN’s issues around the unifying theme of corporate exploitation.

I think this is a very important lens for us. We need to be very careful when we listen to a corporation whose business is destroying the environment talk about “green” anything.

Too often corporations, with giant marketing budgets and few scruples, try to brand their own environmental destruction and social abuses as–somehow–part of the solution to things like global warming, rampant human rights abuses, and economic inequality.

The double speak is just unreal. As the article points out, they’ve actually convinced a lot of people, including members of the U.S. Congress, that burning down rainforests to generate electricity is a “green business.”

The only place the article falls short is in not connecting each of the industries mentioned (coal, agribusiness, logging, mining) with the one industry that makes it all possible: Global Finance.

Well, I guess that’s what RAN is for.

In my days before being the web designer for RAN, I did a fair bit of print work and developed an interest in ways to minimize the ecological impact of what—at the end of the day—is still turning trees into disposable content. It’s when I first learned of the FSC and kenaf. I truly believe that we need a take-your-values-to-work day as our 9-to-5 efforts often have just as big an impact on our environment as the lightbulbs we use or car we drive. I’ve been paying attention recently to the role designers play in creating both desire (and thus consumption!) and solutions.

For this reason, I was delighted to pick up the “Green Issue” of Creative Review magazine. According to the cover, it’s technically called the “It’s About Time We Did Something About Sustainability and the Environment” issue. That same cover also has the table of contents, just to save some pages. Getting magazine designers to think about sustainability leads to some very interesting innovations. A special section breaks down how much ink, paper, metal plates, and chemicals went into the issue’s making and how they’ve sized the magazine to waste less paper (it’s square), are switching to a new paper, recycle their plates and unsold copies, and are examining their entire supply chain for ways to improve.

Other articles include: Creative Activism, talking to your clients about sustainability, how to design for low impact, the greening of Apple, inside the greenwashing industry, and taking your studio carbon-neutral. All the bases are covered. Finally, they fully acknowledge the “Green Issue” trend and the dangers of mere lip service instead pledging that the changes they made for this issue will be permanent from now on and advertising their downloadable version E-CR which, obviously, saves a lot of ink and paper.

In stark contrast, I picked up the latest copy of Common Ground at my local coffee shop, taking note of interviews with both Bill McKibben and Van Jones (who makes me proud to be a Jones). The articles were great as expected but I was horrified to find three more copies sitting on my front steps when I got back to my apartment. One for me, one for my roommate, one for my upstairs neighbors. I looked around and noted that yes, everyone on my block had received a free copy of the “Earth Day” issue. I’m already a member of GreenDimes to avoid just this situation and the added preposterousness of it being the “Green Issue” was honestly insulting.

I tried to find an explanation inside of how Common Ground, with a print run of 50,000, was monitoring and improving its practices. All I could find was a recycled logo, with no indication of the degree (100% post-consumer, I’m hoping). For a San Francisco magazine full of ads for organic milk and yoga retreats, it gets its ass handed to it by a bunch of UK designers in terms of walking the walk. Here’s hoping they step it up and outdo them next round, as I do genuinely appreciate the content.

Okay, I admit that I haven’t read every single Green Issue that’s out there, but these are my picks. Feel free to nominate your own best and worst Green Issues in the comments.

Crossposted on Stanifesto.