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EDF NAMED AND SHAMED FOR ITS GREENWASH

Anna Guyer | 17.06.10

Today French nuclear energy giant EDF has launched Green Britain Day.  We need your help to expose EDF's Green Britain Campaign for the greenwash it represents.  EDF is not green, it's not British.  And it spends £20m on marketing Green Britain day which is more than its annual spend on investing in new green energy.  It's a travesty and we are outraged by how EDF is behaving.  Join us to support the Real Green Britain!

Consider the facts ...  

• EDF stands for Électricité de France = the state owned French energy provider
• It operates 8 nuclear power stations in the UK
• It is the world's largest corporate producer of toxic nuclear waste behind the US and Canada
• Its claims around "low-carbon energy" actually refer to nuclear power that has generated 1420 tonnes of high level nuclear waste that will remain a toxic threat to the environment for hundreds of years. 
• Only 1% of EDF's generation capacity in the UK comes from Renewables (Nuclear = 66%, Coal = 28%, Gas = 5%).
• EDF's electricity generated from their coal fired power stations is responsible for over 20m tonnes of CO2 emissions. 
• Over the last 6 years EDF spent a yearly average of £4.98 per customer building new green energy - this puts them in 5th place amongst the 'Big 6'

That's what Green Britain Day is meant to distract us from.

In this morning's London Metro, not one, but twelve pages feature ads for EDF's 'Green Britain Day.' EDF also bought the whole back cover.  Metro didn't do this for free. That's just a tip of the melting iceberg in terms of EDF's greenwash spend. There are also outdoor ads, deals with media partners including Heart FM, ITV, and MSN, and a costly TV campaign.

Frankly, EDF's big-buck advertising budget would be better spent investing in producing cleaner energy and less, say, in buying ads to cover up the company's self-acclaimed role as one of the "one of the largest participants in the global coal market," as the Guardian's Fred Pierce pointed out on last year's Green Britain Day.

So what's a person who really wants to make Britain greener to do?

Switch to Ecotricity, for one. Ecotricity is a British company reinvesting its profits into building more wind turbines and creating new green energy. Ecotricity invests more than £400 per customer per year to build new green energy -- far more than any competitor.

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince is dedicated to real green energy and, together with Greenpeace, is combatting EDF's greenwash.

"Only 1% of EDF's generation capacity here in the UK is from renewables - how come so little? Could it be that EDF spend more time and money on green image making than on green doing - I certainly think so," Vince says. "The truth is that EDF are one of Britain's biggest polluters. They should start a little closer to home if they really want a Green Britain. There's plenty of scope in the 20 Million tonnes of CO2 they pump into Britain's atmosphere each year - for example. We might all take them a little more seriously if they did as they say we should all do - so go on do something for the team EDF."

Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace’s nuclear campaign, said: “EDF’s shameless advertising campaign is little more than an attempt by a French state-owned nuclear monolith to play the British public for fools. There’s absolutely no way it’s a green company. It’s only interested in fleecing taxpayers for billions of pounds to subsidise a new generation of expensive and dirty atomic power stations.

We want to expose EDF for what they are doing. Here are a few ways you can take help:

• 'How about Green France Day?' - why Green Britain Day is a fraud.

• Facebook: Exposing the Great British Greenwash

• Ecotricity: a British company dedicated to turning electricity bills into windmills. Find out how.

• Twitter: Ecotricity ic clocking the greenwash here. 

And finally, check out Mock Green Britain Day where you can design an ad (and see what others have done) to expose EDF. You can win free electricity for a year (up to £500), too. Note that these are some pretty peeved people and not all the ads are safe for work!

Mock Green Britain Day 

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green, ecotricity, green britain day, greenpeace, edf, greenwash

Is sludge in need of a PR makeover?

Greta Jonyniate | 20.03.12

Is sludge as smelly by another name? Last week, Prwatch.org reported on US Composoting Council’s work with PR firm Colehour+Cohen to rebrand potentially toxic sludge as compost: “the crack cocaine for plants.” Aside from begging the questions as to whether consumers want their vegetables to be akin to drug addicts, this news is a good example of the numerous challenges facing green activists, agencies and businesses.

The US Composting Council sounds like a national group of keen gardeners. In fact, it is a group of waste management businesses, many marketing themselves as holding green credentials. Take WeCare Organics, one member of the Council: its tagline is “Delivering Green” and its name carries the positive connotations of the organic movement. Green is a little vague, so what does the business actually deliver? The disposable of biosolids is listed as its primary concern. This is where the wash moves from green to brown: biosolids is another name for the treated solid residue left over from sewage and waste water treatment. This sludge can contain pathogens, heavy metals and flame retardant chemicals - not the sort of stuff you want sprayed on your dinner.

Farmer Andy McElmurray discovered the disgusting side of biosolids the hard way. He applied sludge to his dairy fields, and when his cows became sick he traced their illness back to chemicals found in the sludge. Instances like this have created a new activist movement in the USA, fighting against what is perceived as the menace that is Big Sludge.

But is this dirtying the name of a good product? Are consumer activist too eager to fling muck at big business? Is biosolids a filthy a word? Millions of tonnes of sludge are produced in the US every year, and half of this produce is landfilled. Unfortunately, this waste produce of the industrial process is not going to disappear any time soon. If the sludge is treated properly and turned into biosolids, it can be reused as compost material to help agriculture - saving landfill space. In the USA, these biosolids have to adhere to the EPA’s Code of Federal Regulations 503, and in the UK it is regulated by DEFRA (the UK produces over a million tonnes of biosolids every year). The benefits of using biosolids can include increased yields and added nutrients in the soil. Biosolids have the potential to be a technique from a green utopia, turning a harmful waste product is turned into a useful green one.

And while activists constantly remind us we are ingesting sewage, and business marketers brand it as harmless biosolids, scientists define it as…complex. In 2007, A report by the Virginia Department of Health found that “the chemical and biological makeup of biosolids is complex and can vary greatly depending on the source of the sewage and the treatment process it undergoes.” In 2002, a report by the USA’s National Academy of Sciences found that “there is no documented scientific evidence that (the EPA’s) 503 rules have failed to protect public health…however additional scientific work is needed.” For business, it is a clean bill of health; for activists, the sickness has yet to be seen in the prognosis. Science reports range from classifying biosolids as potentially toxic to potentially harmless. Whilst this research is invaluable for consumers, politicians and business people, it is difficult to promote a product with the tagline, “Best Enjoyed With A Ph.D in Environmental Science!”

“Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable.” French philosopher Paul Valery was considering loftier problems than sludge when he coined this phrase, but it is apt for the biosolids/sludge PR dilemma. Until scientific research delivers more answers, the PR surrounding biosolids will remain messy.

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greenwash, activism, sludge, biosolids, green pr