With more than 18,000 companies across 160 countries, it is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative.
In this podcast, Dan Wilcock, Sustainability and Governance Manager for the UN Global Compact Network Australia, dives into all the different terms out there – greenwashing, bluewashing, whitewashing, green hushing – and what they really mean for PR and comms professionals.
Dan wraps all these terms up into the neat package of ESG-washing and says the reason we are seeing more of this now is that there has been a real increase in appetite for ESG information and that is coming from every direction – customers, employees, boards, supply chain partners, finance providers – all these groups now have an active interest in what a business is doing on ESG.
This has been accompanied by a rise of misinformation. An online sweep of corporate websites by ACCC found more than half of businesses had made concerning claims about their environmental credentials. For Dan, there’s a spectrum from puffery through to outright fabrication, with the majority being sloppiness and hyperbole – which doesn’t excuse it.
Dan shares it is about developing a bit of confidence, closing the capacity gap, and being informed – businesses should not fear regulatory action from making legitimate and truthful environmental and sustainability claims.
And why does all this matter? Because business will only get harder for companies that aren’t aware and transparent about their impact.
Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/a-public-relations-podcast-smoke-signal/id1360145782?i=1000628665508
