9 out of 10 consumers don’t believe your green claims
A survey by Consumers International last week made grim reading for those companies trying to prove their green credentials – only 10% of consumers believe industrialists when it comes to climate change, compared to 50% who trust green campaign groups and 60% who trust scientists.
Certainly many of the more radical green campaigners seem to be setting the pace. George Monbiot has spent many column inches criticising biofuels on the grounds they will compete with food production, and the next thing we see is 75,000 Mexicans on the streets protesting that they can’t afford tortillas because US bioethanol production is driving up the price of vegetable oil.
Business needs get its voice back in regard to this debate, but the only way it can do this is to make sure what it says is backed up by what it does. For example, Shell organised a recent environmental summit, but ended up being publicly lambasted by most of the big environmental groups for boasting about their relatively modest green projects while quietly expanding their “carbon-intensive tar sands operations in Canada” and “failing to put out its illegal flares in Nigeria”. Shell tried to talk the talk and ended up with egg on its face – they now need to walk the walk.
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