#greenwashing

#greenwashing

Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report. Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector's explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacentres, the analysis of 154 statements found.

Europe's supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum. Brands using plastic packaging from Kraft's Heinz Beanz to Mondelez's Philadelphia use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco. The Saudi state-owned holding opposes production cuts under the UN plastic treaty and is the world's largest corporate greenhouse-gas emitter (over 70m tonnes up to 2023).

Water companies have issued a fifth of the UK's green bonds since 2017, despite a consistently poor record of sewage pollution during that time, research has shown. Privately owned water companies in England have together issued 10.5bn in bonds tied to projects that offer environmental benefits, according to analysis of financial market data by Unearthed, which is part of Greenpeace UK. Anglian Water has been the biggest issuer in the water industry, at 3.5bn, with struggling Thames Water second at 3.1bn.

The marketing machine is powerful, and many executives want to believe these claims because they align with boardroom goals and customer expectations. Yet, the gap between what is said and what is real can be wide. Many technology firms are less than transparent, often overstating their environmental claims. For IT directors, the challenge is to cut through the noise and distinguish between what truly holds up under scrutiny and what is simply branding.

This album was a true undertaking, exciting and torturous in equal measure,

Apple has been marketing its newest smartwatches as being carbon-neutral for nearly two years now, with an array of rationales. It claims that clean energy for manufacturing, along with greener materials and shipping, lop around three-quarters off the carbon emissions for each model of the Apple Watch. The remaining emissions are offset by the purchase of carbon credits, according to Apple.

Louis Anthony "Tony" Cox Jr is working on a large language model designed to censor environmental research, significantly influenced by his connections to the petrochemical industry.

"Meta's decision to power its data centers with fossil fuels while claiming net zero status is deeply troubling. This isn't leadership-it's greenwashing."

Virgin Atlantic, Renault, and Aqua Pura continue to post misleading greenwashing ads despite being censured by the Advertising Standards Agency, raising concerns over accountability in environmental claims.

"The concerns of industry critics are, in many cases, justified," said Silke Einschuetz of AMI Consulting, acknowledging the limitations of advanced recycling technologies."