FLEETDRIVE climate change, as these nations are the leastequipped to financially and institutionally adapt to and rebuild from its effects.
Essentially, the world is on a strict deadline to reduce carbon emissions by 43 per cent by the year 2030. The Paris Agreement stipulates a treaty between several nations to limit the growth of global warming by 1.5 ° C.
Greenwashing only serves to delay any progress made organisations and nations, leaving us unable to fulfil benchmarks by 2030. Not only will progress be delayed, but the consequences of climate change may even worsen due to greenwashing’ s deceptive tactics.
“ It’ s dangerous because it is deceiving the final consumer, it is creating cases of unfair competition and is diverting an important flow of investments initially intended to be directed to sustainable corporate activity and then( lead to) activity not sustainable,” said auto supplier Alcantara CEO Andrea Boragno.
Boragno was a lead organiser of the 6 th International Symposium on“ Greenwashing and Sustainability: A Growing Trend That Needs to be Addressed” held in 2021. The symposium
discussed greenwashing across industries in Europe, the automotive industry included.
What does greenwashing look like?
To illustrate, let’ s take an example of a common case: Say a company wants to market its products as eco-friendly. If it decides to place a“ green” label on its products moving forward, it needs to consider the following:
• Will the label use up more paper as a resource? Or is it something they’ ll only add as a design on existing packaging?
• If the company chooses plastic, will it incur extra waste for the consumer? Will it be newly manufactured or made of recycled materials?
• If the company chooses paper, where will they source the paper? Are they recycling it from existing paper waste or sourcing it traditionally?
• Does this practice align with their company values or promises? Is this initiative purely a marketing tactic or deeply rooted in their topto-bottom practices?
• Lastly, is there an intention to deceive consumers about its own practices?
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