Marketing Sustainability —Tom Polischuk

According to Wikipedia, the term “greenwashing” was coined in 1986 by environmentalist Jay Westerveld. At the time, he questioned the initiatives within the hotel industry to promote the reuse of bath towels to help save the environment. The fact that in the majority of cases these companies did very little or nothing in other areas of waste recycling led him to believe that the real objective of towel reuse was profit enhancement. Today, the term greenwashing calls into question not only the motivation behind sustainability claims, but even the degree of real environmental impact. Just like that well-known Wendy’s commercial showing a huge hamburger bun, the question becomes, “Where’s the beef?”