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A Climate Week Conundrum

Sally Hill | 24.03.11

Tesco Climate Week

The Royal Bank of Scotland and Tesco have been accused of green-washing over their sponsorship of the approaching Climate Week initiative. In many green and ethical circles these brands were difficult to like in the first place, but this is making them even harder to stomach.

In reponse, the ‘Suffrajets’ at Climate Rush altered Tesco signs around Britain to read Tes-CO2. The post ‘Every Little Hurts: Tesco Greenwash exposed’ clearly outlines why Tesco does not deserve to be perceived as a green or climate-friendly company.

RBS, despite a host of ethical finance issues has been shown to be – in fact – the UK’s biggest financier of coal mining and power. This will be the one to really throw the Climate Week initiative into disrepute. All corporate sponsors are going to have some skeletons in their closet, but how can the UK public not have a bone to pick with campaign that’s supposedly fighting climate change, but also cheerleading for big coal?

It is almost certain that as this comes to light, the bad publicity will be more damaging than if RBS had never tried to cover their environmental tracks. A number of celebrities pulled their support, and now a clear case of green-wash, RBS’ bottom line is likely to suffer, with new research this week showing that green-wash could cost firms 2% of their sales.

But the controversy does pose an interesting question about corporate/NGO partnerships, a few of which have come under the microscope recently. WWF has been criticised for jumping in bed with McDonalds, and similarly Greenpeace with the Coca-Cola Company. The campaigners argue that they must engage with the corporate world in order to have the biggest impact possible. But these partnerships mean that the respective companies can put an NGOs name next to their brand, giving a false impression that the cleanliness of the company is far squeakier than it really is.

In the case of Climate Week we have to wonder whether, without a corporate sponsor and the associated level of funding, whether there could be the concerted campaign and awareness drive. However, the campaign should seek out appropriate sponsors, because what it looks like is a whole lot of celebrity smoke and PR mirrors whipped up by the nation’s worst polluters.