GREENWASHING IN INDIA: THE NEW FACE OF CORPORATE MISREPRESENTATION

A bottle turns green. A leaf appears on the label. Somewhere in the advertisement are words like natural, eco-friendly or planet positive. The product itself may not have changed much, but the way we look at it certainly has. That is what makes greenwashing difficult to deal with. In the past, corporate misrepresentation was easier to understand: a company made a false claim and hoped no one would discover it. Greenwashing can be far less obvious. A business may say something technically correct, highlight one positive fact and simply leave the consumer to assume the rest. Think of recyclable packaging around a product that is still environmentally harmful. Or a company announcing lower emissions in one area of its operations even though its total environmental footprint has grown. Nothing said may be completely false, yet something about the picture presented to the public remains misleading. I think this is where the real problem starts.