Greenwashing: The Art of Sustainable Lies

Walk into any supermarket and you will be confronted by promotional signs proclaiming “100% Natural!” beside air-freighted avocados wrapped in plastic, with a carbon footprint of 2.5 kg of CO₂ equivalent per kg of avocado—not to mention avocado production’s contribution to deforestation and the destruction of fragile habitats.
So what about that sign telling us it is 100% natural? Well, plainly put, it’s a deception—a clever marketing ploy designed to give us a warm, fuzzy feeling. Like we’re doing our bit. Welcome to the forked-tongue, double-speak world of Greenwashing.

What is Greenwashing?
Greenwashing is when companies exaggerate or fabricate their environmental credentials to make their products look more eco-friendly than they really are. It’s usually—but not always—outright lies. Often, it’s clever marketing that leaves out the unpalatable details.
The term was coined back in the 1980s, but it’s exploded in recent years. Why? Because sustainability sells. Consumers want to feel good about their purchases. So instead of changing harmful practices, many big brands just changed their language. They embraced the competitive advantage of lies and deception to fool consumers into believing they were making environmentally sound decisions.

Recyclable Claim
Some of the most offensive and dangerous examples of greenwashing are wrapped up in the word RECYCLABLE. You see it on packaging all the time, and yet those making claims that their product packaging is recyclable are also well aware that their packaging will never be recycled—either because of the way it is designed or because it is a mix of card and plastic, which will be rejected at the recycling facility and go straight to landfill.
So when you choose to buy a product in recyclable packaging, in many cases you are a victim of the dirty trick that is Greenwashing.

Natural Produce and the Greenwash Game
Actual, natural produce should mean food grown without harmful chemicals, using sustainable methods that care for the soil, water, and biodiversity. But in the wrong hands, even the very word “organic” becomes a marketing tool.
Some examples:

• “Made with organic ingredients”… this sounds good until you realise that only 70% of the product has to be organic to make this claim. The other 30% can—and often is—highly processed, toxic crap.

• Flown-in organic produce can clock up thousands of air miles. Organic? Technically. Sustainable? Absolutely not.

• Packaging tricks: kraft paper colours, leaves, and farm scenes are used to imply wholesomeness. The use of Irish-sounding farm names on imported, processed goods with very little to back the image up is classic Greenwashing and pure marketing deception.

• Organic by name only: Worse still, not all certified organic outfits are what they seem. There have been numerous examples of certified operations applying far-from-organic principles behind the scenes—because ticking boxes on paper doesn’t always match up to what happens on the ground.

The Irish Context: Close to Home, Far from Honest
In Ireland, the green image is everywhere. We’re a country known for our lush fields and clean air—and that reputation is ripe for exploitation by the Greenwashing marketeers who work for big corporates and faceless, nameless shareholders.

An “Irish-grown” campaign by one of our major supermarkets recently featured carrots from the UK during our ‘off-season’. Technically, they hadn’t lied. But they sure weren’t telling the truth.

Irish carrots are available 12 months of the year. so swap the term ‘Off Season’ for ‘Expensive Season’ and you’ll begin to understand how Greenwashing works. 

Another recent example was a chain store offering imported organic apples in February, labelled as ‘fresh and local,’ while our own Irish apples sat in cold storage, unsold.

Swap the term ‘fresh and local’ for ‘cheap, imported and profitable’ and….well you see where this is going. 

The major dairy brands are also enthusiastic advocates of greenwashing and tend to slap the word “grass-fed” on packaging as though it means something. Most Irish dairy is indeed grass-based, but when it’s being marketed abroad, that label can be used to imply the product is more special or more sustainable than it actually is. That is Greenwashing.

Why Big Corporates Do It
Simple: it works. Sustainability is trendy, and green sells. And the big boys are only interested in profit. They have no environmental conscience, care not a single jot for the health of their consumers, and serve only the pursuit of profit.
The truth is, becoming truly sustainable takes investment, effort, and often a complete change in how a business operates. It’s far easier (and cheaper) to rebrand—or simply to lie. The large multiples lean on buzzwords: “eco-friendly,” “natural,” “green,” or even “local-style.” The result? A feel-good image that keeps consumers spending while very little actually changes behind the scenes.

What This Means for All of Us
When we fall for Greenwashing, we:

• Support industrial farming systems that hurt the environment

• Undermine local producers doing the hard graft of real sustainability

• Get misled into paying more for food that isn’t worth the premium

It erodes trust. Not just in companies, but in the very words we’d like to rely on: organic, natural, ethical.

So, How Do We Avoid the Trap?
Let’s be honest: no one gets it right all the time. But here are a few tips that can keep you from falling for Greenwashed nonsense:

• Buy local. When you can, know your grower. Ask where your food came from.

• Look past the buzzwords. “Eco-friendly” means nothing without proof. Organic means nothing without substance.

• Don’t rely on certificates alone. Ask questions. If a farm is open and transparent, you’ll know pretty quickly whether their claims are real.

• Follow the seasons. If strawberries are on sale in January, they didn’t come from Skerries or Rush.

• Support businesses that show their workings. Transparency isn’t flashy, but it’s honest.

Final Thoughts
Greenwashing is slippery, clever, and everywhere. But so is the alternative: real food, grown by real people, in real soil.
That’s one of the reasons we at Bare Acre Farm have chosen not to pursue organic certification. Not because we don’t farm organically—we absolutely do—but because we don’t believe registration is proof of anything meaningful. Instead, we invite our customers to visit us. And they do, in their hundreds. They walk around the farm, see the fields and the polytunnels, ask questions, and witness for themselves how we grow. That’s transparency you can literally walk through.
We don’t have shiny packaging or PR campaigns. We have muck on our boots, dirt on our hands, and flower & vegetable beds buzzing with life.

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