Articles by JACQUELINE

Ever since “greenwashing” officially entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1999, the definition of “disinformation that is disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image” has an instantly recognizable term. There is no question that the ominous presence of this “bête verte” is increasingly problematic to businesses and regulators, while NGO’s and consumer protection groups navigate through a maze of hazy green claims in products and services.

Much of the greenwashing accusations or “sins”, as creatively articulated by TerraChoice’s “The Sins of Greenwahsing”, have been focused on consumer household and personal use products. However, there has been no shortage of eco–criticism for the highly fragmented and mostly unregulated global travel and tourism industry.  The majority of travel businesses are small and medium size enterprises, but collectively they are energy, carbon, water and waste intensive, while mass tourism is highly disruptive to the natural environment. In an industry with  eight main sectors and approximately twenty eight subsectors, it is not difficult to make environmental claims that are light on accuracy yet can neither be easily substantiated nor discredited.  While the perpetrators may generally be well intentioned but uninformed tourism operators, large publically traded companies like EasyJet from the UK have also been reprimanded for misleading advertising.

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