Greenwashing and the corporate mind

We often come across the terms 'greenwash' and 'greenwashing1.' But are we sometimes missing examples of greenwashing in practice?

Usage of the term 'corporate greenwash' is normally focussed on advertising, high visibility campaigns, or claims about manufacturing processes that simply don't add up.  So we think we know the places  and media where we're going to find greenwashing at its most potent.

But it can be instructive to look at examples of ordinary, everyday documents to see how corporations position and defend their behavior using language, and especially, how they get others to do that for them.  

This is the hidden side of greenwashing, but it's just as important as the media that we're used to.  In fact, there's a strong argument for saying that 'quiet' greenwashing texts like these are  subservsive and dangerous, simply because they may pass unnoticed. 

Many of us think we can recognise greenwashing from miles away.  But it's not always that easy.

Here is an example from the Chemetco case, the facts and prosecution of which are described in detail elsewhere on this site. In  the example we're looking at here, a third party unwittingly takes on some of the attitudes of its client and so puts a dizzying spin on one or two important facts.

What really stands out here is the nature of this document. It's not a press release. It's not an annual report. It's not something that we'd normally associate with influence. It's a humble work plan.

At the time it was written, nobody could expect that it would one day be in the public domain.

Nevertheless, it does rather a good job of managing the reputation of its client, which is the business of PR.  It is designed to make its recipient think better of Chemetco, and Chemetco uses it as an opportunity to mislead the reader.

At the time the document was written, Chemetco was at the start of serious trouble, but nobody yet knew just how much trouble.

Chemetco was on course to be convicted of serious, federal criminal offences. They may have suspected this by now, but nobody could predict a conclusion - inside the company or out - until the case was tried a few years later. The corporation and its executives had not yet been indicted. That wasn't to happen until 21 April 1999.

So the company was in limbo. For the time being, it was allowed to continue its business of refining copper and tin, but things would never be the same, and everybody 'in the know' must have felt this in their bones.

Chemetco employed a company called CSD Environmental Services to handle its response to the discovery by the EPA of its secret discharge pipe.

What's interesting about CSD is that in her earlier career, CSD's owner had a background in regulatory enforcement with the Illinois EPA, over a period of almost seven years, between 1985 and 1992².

But now CSD was handling compliance issues for businesses. What the company could not know was that the wetlands contamination produced by Chemetco was far from accidental, that it was carefully designed, repeated many times and concealed during its ten years of operation.

And CSD could not know what the United States was later to prove, that Chemetco were to lie during their evidence and otherwise to hamper the criminal investigation.

Here is the first page from the work plan that CSD was commissioned to supply. This wasn't a legal response, but a practical one in answer to the question: what could the corporation now do to clear up its problem?

The work plan was submitted to the Collinsville office of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency just under a month after the discovery of the illegal waste pipe.

Analysis of a greenwashing text

Take a look at  the first paragraph of page 1 of the document,  just above.  It starts: 'An apparent spill of zinc oxide....' 

This is an interesting use of the word 'apparent' in an attempt to soften the impact of the word 'spill.' 

Chris Cahnovsky's account of the discovery (he was the key prosecution witness) describes water gushing out of a pipe under pressure.  The word 'spill', here employed by CSD, implies something quite different to what Cahnovsky saw and recorded that day.  A spill is accidental.  Milk spills.  Oil spills from wrecked tankers.  Spills aren't deliberate, and they don't 'gush.'

If you haven't already read or heard Cahnovsky's account, you might want to look at that before you continue. Transcript of Alistair Siddons' interview with Chris Cahnovsky on the moment of discovery of the illegal pipe »

CSD goes on to say  '...[the spill] was found during a routine inspection ...on  September 18...'  The inspection was 'routine': something that happened all the time.  And if it was routine, it suggests that it had happened before, not once, but repeatedly and at regular intervals.  And if this is true, then it tends to support the lie that the spill was a fresh discovery of a recent accident.

Only it isn't true that the inspection of this part of the plant was routine.  When I interviewed Chris Cahnovsky about the discovery, he told me that for some reason on that morning of September 18, he decided to walk over to the ditch by the contractors' gate for the first time ever.   

The water that he found gushing out there was in fact the product of a mechanism that had been designed, commissioned and actively used by Chemetco to pump waste, several thousand times, onto a piece of land that drained into a tributary of the Mississippi River.

CSD's work plan acknowledges that both the Illinois and federal EPA were present at the inpection, but the moment of discovery of something  exceptional just doesn't exist as far as the text is concerned. 

The account is remarkable for its depersonalistion of the discovery: 'Personnel from the...USEPA... were...present at the inspection.'  They were 'present'.  We talk of 'presenteeism', the act of spending long, unproductive hours in the office, for the sake of being seen there.  Being 'present' is nearly always unremarkable.  In this case, the language neuters the formal enforcement status of the EPA, both at the plant and outside it, and passivates their role on the day of the discovery.

The same paragraph goes on to say that during the inspection by the EPA, '...material that appeared to be zinc oxide was discharging from a pipe...' [my italics for emphasis].  Two things stand out here. 

First, the use of the word 'appeared' is designed to destabilise the fact that the material did prove to be substantially made up of zinc oxide (and heavy metals including cadmium and lead). 

Second, Chris Cahnovsky saw and the prosecution proved that the material wasn't just passively oozing out of the pipe, as the passive contsruction 'was discharging' suggests.

Medical wounds 'discharge'.  They do so slowly, often unobserved and under dressings.  Chemetco's waste, on the other hand, was being pumped -- quite spectacularly, by Chris Cahnovsky's first-hand account -- and under considerable pressure.

In the second paragraph, CSD goes on to say that 'To ensure that further releases from the pipe [did] not occur a ...PVC plastic cap was temporarily placed over the end of the discharge pipe.'

This plastic cap is a complete red herring.  The prosecution was able to prove that hazardous chemical waste was being pumped out of the plant through pipes controlled by a valve inside the plant.  The mechanism used by Chemetco to stop waste reaching the far end of the pipe was this valve.  

The idea of capping sounds plausible and definite.  However both the act of capping and Chemetco's misleading emphasis on the importance of the cap were calculated to deflect and hamper the investigation. 

Of course, CSD had to take at face value what Chemetco told them and are here repeating their client's misleading representation.  But the document that results has the power to give a legitimacy to Chemetco's statements and actions that simply did not exist. 

CSD goes on: 'The pipe and valve will be removed up to the south side of Oldenburg road and a permanent seal wil be installed to prevent any further releases.'  Once again, this plan of Chemetco's, once implemented, would tend to deflect any further attention away from the pumping mechanism and valve inside the plant.

Unfortunately for Chemetco, by the time CSD's work plan had been written, Cahnovsky had already registered that something about the pipe wasn't  at all right. 

When he returned, after lunch, from his initial inspection of the plant on 18 September, he found that water was no longer gushing out of the pipe.  But he saw that the valve was still in the open position.  He quickly and accurately concluded that the pipe was being controlled from inside the plant.

Clearly, this instance of Chemetco's greenwashing-by-proxy didn't save their bacon.  But this example shows how it may be instructive as well as fascinating to look for gaps, errors and over-simplification in corporate documents.  Even the most plausible may prove to be highly misleading.  Even the 'quietest' document may prove to be pure greenwash.

Alistair Siddons © 2008

Notes:

(1) According to Sourcewatch, Greenwashing is 'the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy.'  I'm saying this definition needs to go further to include words and actions that protest innocence even in the face of irrefutible guilt.  

(2)  Hearing before the pollution Control Board, taken on March 11, 1997. Cindy Davis states that she is president of CSD environmental services and that she formerly worked for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

NASA Photograph of Chemetco's 'spill' »

Transcript of Alistair Siddons' interview with Chris Cahnovsky on the moment of discovery of the illegal pipe »

'How Chemetco lost its mojo':  account of the discovery of the secret hazardous waste pipe »

For those interested in reading the remainder of the work plan, this is attached below.

Page 2, work plan submitted to Illinois EPA, October 15 1996, after discovery of Chemetco illegal hazardous waste pumping mechanism

Page 3, work plan submitted to Illinois EPA, October 15 1996, after discovery of Chemetco illegal hazardous waste pumping mechanism

Page 4, work plan submitted to Illinois EPA, October 15 1996, after discovery of Chemetco illegal hazardous waste pumping mechanism

Page 5, work plan submitted to Illinois EPA, October 15 1996, after discovery of Chemetco illegal hazardous waste pumping mechanism