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Greenwash

Exposing the exaggeration, absurd claims or downright lies that big business makes about its green credentials. Email your examples to greenwash@guardian.co.uk
  • The EU Eco-label Regulation Flower logo

    The deflowering of the EU's green logo

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: The EU's Ecolabel is used to certify a product partly made from rainforest timber
  • Solar panels are used to power Chevron Corp.'s operations in the Midway-Sunset oil field, California

    Chevron's solar panels won't clean up its filthy oilfield

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: Chevron plans to use solar energy to power pumps at one of the oldest and dirtiest oilfields on the planet
  • Edinburgh airport

    Edinburgh airport's tree project is trampled by its carbon elephants

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: Edinburgh airport funding children to plant 500 trees is vastly overshadowed by its expansion and huge carbon emissions
  • Shell ad

    Green advertising rules are made to be broken

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: A UK government checklist of claims for advertisers will fail to stop cynical greenwash without a legally enforceable framework

  •  Airbus  A380

    Airbus gets a crafty upgrade by flying the flag for biodiversity

    Fred Pearce: A380 airliner to feature official logo for UN, despite aviation being a major source of emissions that threaten biodiversity
  • REDD and the rainforest in the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, in the Amazon Basin, Bolivia

    Noel Kempff project is 'saving the forest' by forcing destruction elsewhere

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: Forest conservation project in Bolivia proves that unless a nation as a whole cuts deforestation, individual carbon offset schemes are worthless

  • USG underground coal gasification process

    Could burning coal underground take Clean Coal Ltd in too deep?

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: The coal 'gasification' stakes are high – not least because the company behind the plan is called Clean Coal Ltd
  • Drax power station

    Drax power plant is no greener than the coal it burns

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: Drax has shelved its biofuel plans, yet still boasts publicly about 'undertaking the largest biomass co-firing project in the world'

  • chagos kids

    The Chagos archipelago – where conservation meets colonialism

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: Islanders expelled from their homes in the 1960s won't be welcome back under plans to convert the idyllic archipelago into a 'nature reserve'
  • COP15 REDD Rainforest or rain forest  Jamanxim National Forest, state of Para, northern Brazil

    Brazilian beef barons are greenwashing to preserve their place on your plate

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: Ranchers claim to be going green by flattening Paraguay's traditional Indian lands and setting aside part of it for nature
  • The Audi e-tron makes its debut at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

    Has Audi's electric dream already run out of gas?

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: Audi is busy promoting its green fantasy car of tomorrow, while the CO2 emissions of its real fleet are still way off EU targets
  • Qatar's West Bay financial district in Doha is the grand project of the Emir

    Qatar to use biofuels? What about the country's energy consumption?

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: Qatar announces the future use of biofuels on its airline, but its domestic carbon emissions are shockingly free and easy

  • Chunk of coal on fire

    Coal is dirtying Scotland's carbon-neutral plans

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: Scotland has the potential to be a world leader in developing low-carbon fuels, but Alex Salmond's reliance on coal is an albatross around its neck
  • Shell

    Shell's promise of a bright future turns out to be yet another false dawn

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: Oil company has been splashing out on ads about its shallow commitment to low-carbon technologies during Copenhagen

  • Nick Griffin, the BNP leader

    How can Nick Griffin's racist policies belong to the 'only true green party'?

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: Griffin has taken the line of many leading environmentalists that overpopulation is a environmental threat – but he's no green

  • Waitrose

    Supermarkets get slippery over green palm oil promises

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: Food manufacturers in Europe called for greener palm oil. The growers supplied it. So why aren't supermarkets buying it?

  • the Loy Yang Open Cut coal mine in the Latrobe Valley, Australia carbon emission

    Australia's Copenhagen climate strategy is smoke and mirrors

    Fred Pearce
    Fred Pearce: Australian PM Kevin Rudd talks a good climate game, offering 25% emissions cuts. But do the numbers add up?
  • New Zealand Rainforest

    New Zealand's 'Kyoto forests' sow the seeds for a massive emissions surge

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: When New Zealand's sink forests are harvested in the 2020s, as is likely, all that carbon will return to the atmosphere

  • Milford Sound in New Zealand

    New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it's no friend of the earth

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: Lord of the Rings country trades on its natural beauty, but emissions have risen 22% since it signed up to Kyoto

  • E.on's coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire

    Brown's green spin on carbon capture

    Fred Pearce

    Fred Pearce: UK ministers talk up the carbon capture research programme as if it were already an available technology

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