From greenwashing to legitimate Sustainable Development

It is not enough to make noble Mission or Purpose statements in organizations, but rather to act towards the results that are in the company’s systems, processes and daily practices, requiring a deep intellectual and emotional understanding from the point of view of the sustainability of the production resources of the Earth, Society, Capital and Labor.

Sustainability as a competitive advantage, in the sense of its longevity, depends on sustainable businesses, solutions and attitudes in the expectation of a more economically prosperous world, as well as an environmentally and socially fairer one.

Aiming to fulfill the Organization’s Purpose without appropriate action is mere daydreaming. And acting without effort is an exercise in meditation. Therefore, since every discourse must be translated into practice, and since there is no practice without effort, the only way to validate the execution of the strategy is through commitment and monitoring of legitimately sustainable results.

On the other hand, while there is a concern with practices that generate sustainable results, contrary to good objectives, there appears the reprehensible greenwashing, an expression in which brands create a false appearance of sustainability, and that the products, objectives and policies are environmentally friendly, without necessarily applying it in practice.

In the cursed category of deceiving stakeholders, we can include socialwashing, which repeats the “washing” mechanism to avoid demanding greater social responsibility from companies, often taking specific actions, but without a more effective and continued commitment to playing an active role in overcoming social inequalities and exclusions. And since social impact metrics are less frequent than those that guide environmental initiatives, it is more difficult to identify actions that are mere makeup (i).

Some subgroups of socialwashing ⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ are “bluewashing” (visual association with the UN to give undue legitimacy), “pinkwashing” (ineffective association with themes linked to LGBTQI+ agendas), and “rainbowashing” (inappropriate use of the UN Sustainable Development Goals).

The concept of washing, laundering or ideological falsehood, can occur in the governance dimensions, when “creative accounting” reaches the limits of accounting fraud, or also in the People dimension, when the exploitation of labor abuses the asymmetry of power between contractors and employees.

And it’s not too much to admit the existence of peoplewashing in organizations that implement relaxation spaces but maintain a culture that doesn’t allow people to use them, or that talk about diversity practices but don’t have an inclusive and diverse environment.

Peoplewashing is a culture that validates behaviors that its strategies don’t advocate, leaders who only think about results and ignore people, pay unhealthy pay instead of improving the work environment, and measure downtime due to accidents instead of measuring employee safety. Organizations truly dedicated to People Satisfaction leverage modern technologies so they can truly harness people’s skills, imagination, dreams, and ideas.

Companies that intentionally adopt whitewashing strategies often do so to distance themselves from environmental or social lapses of themselves or their suppliers (iii), making the practice contribute to damaging the organization’s relationships with Stakeholders, undermining the necessary relationship of trust in the system, and diminishing the power of the Parties to lead companies to more sustainable manufacturing processes and business operations ^(iv).

When a company decides to behave responsibly and adopt a sustainable development vision, it may have to profoundly change its corporate culture to understand and embrace the concept. Integrating sustainable development into communications is not enough to persuade stakeholders to support the organization’s strategic plan (v). An organization truly committed to sustainable development requires that responsibility for the issue is not diffuse or non-strategic, that there is C-level engagement, that there is a connection with the core business, and that its actions are not circumstantial or opportunistic.

The term sustainability is widely used to indicate programs, initiatives and actions aimed at preserving production resources, but in fact it refers to the organization’s commitments in four distinct areas: Environmental, Social, Governance and People, which are the pillars of Sustainable Development.