Ok so here is the thing - a decade ago or so (the timeline is a little hazy for me, I needed to double check - ok so early 2000s 😂 which was more like two and a half decades ago) - banks made this huge push for everyone’s accounts to go paperless. They touted it as being better for the environment since we were using less paper. I, like others of my age category and younger, looked at it as a way to remove the piles of paper that accumulated from banks with records that I did not know what to do with and felt a little like Dwight from the Office shredding documents like it was a mission of the utmost importance.
But what if going paperless had nothing to do with the green movement and everything to do with cutting costs while blaming an industry that was not doing the harm it was being blamed for? Ok yes, this article may also be about greenwashing but when I run out of greenwashing topics I will move on! Putting the banking industry aside for a moment, if we consider bags from the grocery stores, stores in Canada went from paper bags to plastic but are back to paper as they are better for the environment - was the pulp and paper industry villainized for years for other industries’ greenwashing campaigns? Speaking with a sustainable marketing professional who worked in the pulp and paper industry he talked about how sustainable the industry actually is. Paper may only be recyclable up to 7 times but there is very little waste of the tree and other trees are being planted in their place since trees themselves are a natural renewable resource coupled with the fact that the industry produces.some of the industrial emitters of greenhouse gases. Check out the Two Sides Website to learn about more popular myths and common misconceptions in the paper industry. Back to the banks’ campaigning, this villainizationion of the paper industry that happened as result, was a blatant example of greenwashing that has never really been addressed by either the banking industry or regulatory bodies. Instead the paper industry has been left to try to explain how sustainable it is with the multitude of certifications and organizations like Two Sides trying to claw back a portion of the market it once had. Banks on the other hand simply fazed out their campaigns and green slogans about going paper free leaving others to clean up their mess. This entire campaign is merely one example of the importance of legislation around greenwashing.
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