We are aware of the Whitewashing and the many ways people, governments, and corporations modify or outright lie to change historical facts so that their responsibility is minimized. Today my topic is Greenwashing, or the way people and corporations utilitze advertising or marketing techniques to imply their farming or manufacturing has minimal environmental impact or is earth and animal friendly. I will speak to each of these in seperate posts, for today let us dive into greenwashing cocoa.
Nestlé is one of the large, multi-national companies that are cocoa product producers, and I have already written a post about them: Is Nestlé a Good World Neighbor?
—**—
A Bit About Cocoa
Cocoa trees (and their important pods that grow on the trunks and branches) are found in hot and humid regions of the world. Mostly in West Africa (Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana), Latin America (Ecuador), and South East Asia (Indonesia).
There are three main varieties of cocoa trees: Criollo, Trinitario, and Forastero (Amelonado) and these are known as ”shadow plants” in that they grow under the shadow of other trees like bananas, or palms. They can live up to 100 years, but are very productive in mid-life.
Rainfall is a critical part of their growth and yield and so they are susceptible to climate change. After growing and harvesting, the plants are split open and seeds removed. Then the seeds are fermented (as the pulp around the seeds sit in the sun), and then dried by the family or community, while the outer flesh is generally returned to the land as compost.
The full narrative of what happens can be found on other sites.
Greenwashing Techniques
The idea of corporate social responsibility has been studied, and results confirm that a green-oriented strategy is positively valued by stakeholders and consumers alike (1 2014). The companies do not even have to really do much to market that they are a green company, and do not even have to show proof; although any recognition for their efforts, regardless of how tangential, is touted with news releases and web pages.
- TheGuardian: Environmentalist Jay Westerveld coined the term greenwashing in the 1980s, contemptuously criticizing the hospitality industry’s push for clients to reuse their towels under the pretense of saving the environment. In truth, hotels were fundamentally motivated to cut costs through less laundering.
Being or being perceived as ”green” sells, and now we are seeing many corporate websites have areas where they discuss the ”good” they are doing for the environment. So companies boast solar panels on roof tops, grants to various groups trying to improve soils, forests, green areas, and even how they have improved their waste handling. But often these little stories hide a larger truth of deforestation, child or slave labor, pollution, and so on. So read critically, for not all green marketing claims or advertising accurately reflect a companies environmental conduct, and should be viewed as a greenwashing effort (1).
- Greenwashing companies spend time, effort, and money through advertisement and marketing efforts claiming or implying they are “green”; but actually spend little to nothing on working to be sustainable, supporting regenerative agriculture, reducing carbon outputs, etc.
- Or they reduce packaging and claim it is for ”green” efforts.
Beautiful Stock Pictures
Advertising and web pages show people surrounded by lovely green and healthy landscapes where even the pictures of the cocoa pods and trees are colorful and beautiful. What are not shown is the deforestation caused by the farming practices, the worn down bodies of the workers after a day of harvesting, and the gnarly hands of processors.
The people pictures show smiling farmers, children, workers, and consumers as they happily and effortlessly collect and process the cocoa pods from the trees. To quote the ChocolateJournalist: I also dare you to have a big smile on your face while being bitten by mosquitoes all day, in an unbearable humidity, doing an extremely physical work, while being paid an average of $1 a day. Truth is that the majority of chocolate corporations buy already-made chocolate from other giant manufacturers, so they don’t even know where that cacao comes from, let alone associating the face of a farmer to it.
What we should be looking for are the names of the actual farms and farmers, where their farms are located, and their ratings or certifications. The WashingtonPost (2019) did a photo essay that looked at children, from 13-18, that worked on cocoa farms. These pictures are closer to the truth, but also are taken with a photographer’s point-of-view, hence the dark colors.
Lofty Compacted Verbiage
Claiming something is ”all natural” means nothing other than nothing synthetic or natural has been added to the product.
- I could say oil is ”all natural” when it comes out of the ground, but certainly I would not want to eat it; meaning any product can be called ”all natural.”
- Rice may contain zinc, magnesium, and arsenic; all of these items are all-natural; but only 2 are safe to consume at certain doses. Meaning ”all natural” does not mean safe to consume.
- The broccoli head I buy is all natural, but that term only tells me it is broccoli.
This marketing phrase is not helpful because it does not address the food’s farming and processing methods. “All natural” does not tell me if the plant is GMO, organic, pesticide-free, was it pasteurized or irradiated, where it is from, etc.
Sometimes manufacturers use ”certified” as somehow trying to imply external reviews and a difference from competitors. But “certified all natural” does not mean anything, when ”all natural” has no meaning. Certified also means nothing when there is no one listed as having done the certification.
Reading ”only the best ingredients” also means absolutely nothing since it is a marketing phrase and not a quote from an authority. This phrase appears in many cocoa advertisements to imply you are buying quality, but without some reference to what quality means, this phrase is meaningless. Where’s the nutrition information, where is the comparisons to other similar products, where is the proof?
The ChocolateJournalist writes chocolate brands that are truly ethical and sustainable will proudly shower you with info and details if you ask them, and will humbly admit where they can improve, without trying to fool you in the meantime.
Irrelevant and Redundant Evidence
When a chocolate product claims, ”only 3 ingredients,” they are trying to imply they are something special, their product is pure, organic, healthy, and close to the natural raw product as one can get. But normally, this product only has three ingredients: cacao, sugar, and the optional cacao butter or lecithin. So claiming to be what you are provides no additional information to the consumer.
Another is ”we use products only from small, family-owned farms,” again to imply the company has personal relationships within a community that they support and that they are unique among the industry. Well, those implications are false.
- ~95% of the world’s cocoa beans are harvested on small, family-run farms with an average size of 2-5 hectares.
- Cocoa beans from each farm are collected by co-ops or middle-companies who pay the farmers.
- These middle groups collect and sell to other companies that are making the products for consumers.
Other tautologies that drive me crazy include:
- Using “vegan” as a distinguishing label, when the item is naturally vegan.
- Labeling something ”gluten free,” when it is naturally gluten free.
- “No XYZ chemicals used”, when it is against the law to use these chemicals anyways.
Sustainable and Cheap Claims
Let us be real here, you cannot find cheap yet sustainable food. You can find cheap and industrialized process food, but that is not a sustainable option. Even the ChocolateJournalists writes: Big chocolate brands putting all sorts of certification stickers, colorful images and feel-good claims on their products are fooling you. You can’t have sustainable chocolate at a low price, and here is why: to make millions selling chocolate, cacao has to be extremely inexpensive.
Again, let us look at reality, for food to be inexpensive it is either financially supported by the government, or the farmers are kept depressingly poor. Too poor to worry about sustainability, too poor to not use all of their kids in harvesting, too poor to not use whatever means increase their yield.
What is Being Hidden
Hype Goals Not Results
The WorldCocoaFoundation wrote in 2010 that the chocolate industry had set a 10-year goal of reducing the worst forms of child labor in cocoa farming by 70%. It was not met. Now there is a goal to eliminate child labor by 2025.
The industry markets, through op-eds by their executives in industry magazines and websites, progress has been made, and industry has spent millions of dollars to improve the situation (1). Then, turn the focus to hyping that “forced labor and human trafficking are extremely rare in the cocoa industry, according to published reports.”
Some, like Cargill, produce fancy infographics for bloggers to use on their sites that hype what they have been doing to better an industry, be green, or be a better community member.
Hidden Tradeoffs
When a company says something like ”no forests cleared for this cocoa” but do not tell you this cocoa comes from a heavy pesticide area that habitually uses child labor. Their focus is on the good but beneath that claim is the bad. Another example is packaged in recyclable materials, but its contents were farmed on cleared forest land that destroyed animal habitats.
Use Numbers for Good not Truth
When efforts are missed use numbers and statistics that show you in the best light.
Sometimes it takes careful reading to understand what is happening. One multinational company acknowledged that what leads to children being used as laborers is the poverty of the families and community in which they were born. One of the many ways to lift children from these circumstances is education, but education is lower on the list of priorities. What might appear first on the list is to have fair prices for products, create cooperatives where they do not exist, teach sustainable practices, etc.
Instead, the post I read focused on the other items such as assuring children had birth certificates so they could go to school, getting them school bundles so they had the tools they needed. Notice the difference? Treating the fundamentals of the poverty is very expensive but paying for the smaller steps to getting into school is less expensive. Are lifting families by paying a fair price for products, and making sure children are not laborers but in school important? Yes. But they are not equal in terms of individual, family, and community impact, and focusing on school before fair prices is, in my opinion, dealing with a symptom but not a cure.
Earth.org (2021) highlights 10 companies for greenwashing, including: Volkswagen, BP, Exxon, Coco Cola, Starbucks, IKEA, well known fashion brands, water bottle companies, big banks and Nestle of course.
BusinessInsider: Ghana grows but does not profit
Truth in Advertising
Following the TruthInAdvertising organization has led me to these recent actions that only highlight the greenwashing going on throughout the cocoa corporate world, regardless of what they report to shareholders and consumers alike.
Implied Unprocessed
Green & Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate and Pure Dark Chocolate falsely marketing that products contain a specific percentage of cacao (the raw, unprocessed version of cocoa) when the ingredient lists show that the chocolate ingredient in them is cocoa and not cacao. Lee et al. v. Mondelez International, Inc. et al. 22-cv-1127, S.D.N.Y. (Feb. 2022)
Implied no Forced Child or Slave Labor
Chocolate products from Nestle, Cargill, Mars, Hershey’s, Mondelez, and others misleadingly representing that companies would “phase out” and stop using forced child labor when they continue to use child labor to harvest cocoa. Coubaly et al. v. Nestle U.S.A. et al. 21-cv-386, D.D.C. (Feb. 2021)
In February 2018, a class-action lawsuit was filed against The Hershey Company for allegedly failing to disclose that the cocoa beans used in chocolate products are the result of child and slave labor (Tomasella et al v. The Hershey Company et al, Case No. 18-cv-10360, D. Mass.).
Implied Ethical + Environmentally Sourced
February 2020: A class-action lawsuit was filed alleging that Starbucks, Mars Inc., and The Quaker Oats Company misleadingly represent that the cocoa used in chocolate products – including Starbucks hot cocoa mixes, Dove chocolate, and Quaker Chocolate Chip Chewy Bars – has been sourced following ethical and environmentally responsible standards when, according to the complaint, the companies use cocoa that has been harvested using child and slave labor and farming practices that are not sustainable and cause mass deforestation. (Plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in August 2020.) May 2021: The claims against Mars and Quaker Oats were dismissed with prejudice. The claims against Starbucks remain pending. (Myers et al v. Starbucks Corp., Mars, Inc., and The Quaker Oats Company, Case No. 20-cv-335, C.D. Cal.)
No Artificial Flavors or Colors
In April 2020, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Nestlé for allegedly falsely representing that Nesquik products contain “no artificial flavors or colors” on the front packaging when, according to plaintiffs, the ingredients list discloses that product contains cocoa processed with alkali. (Santini et al v. Nestlé USA, Inc., Case No. 20-cv-2433, N.D. Cal.)
Implied Not Processed
In November 2019, a class-action lawsuit was filed against ConAgra Brands for allegedly misleadingly representing that the product is “Made with Real Cocoa” when, according to plaintiffs, the product actually contains a highly processed alkalized cocoa. (Aleisa et al v. ConAgra Brands, Inc., Case No. 19-cv-7520, N. D. CA.)
Certification for Cocoa
The Rainforest Alliance Organization is in the process of moving from the UTZ Certified to the Rainforest Alliance certification process to indicate a provable stance for more sustainable farming and better opportunities for farmers, their families, and our planet. Products get this label only after auditing that they are meeting requirements.
Conclusion
What this means is that one need not be a conspiracy-theorist to feel that large corporations are out to make a profit despite the why, how, or what they need to do to gain that penny. Now certain industries are notorious for certain issues, like slave and child labor. But really, very few large, multinational corporations have managed to stay community-based, ethical, or rightous while in the race for a dollar.
But large, multinational cooperations have a disadvantage related to their size. Once a company gets to a certain size, the group mentality takes over and has a life of its own. Many people, with differing senses of ethics, make decisions that the originator of the business might not have made. It is easy for a corporate culture to change into something unrecognizable by the owner.
But some people and organizations are working hard to help cocoa-reliant communities. For example, the UTZ certification stands for more sustainable farming and better opportunities for farmers, their families, communities, and our planet. The requirements include good agricultural practices and farm management, safe and healthy working conditions, addressing child and forced labor, and protection of the environment.
The whole point of this post was to talk about green-washing using cocoa as an example. Let me know if I managed to do that, or not.
—Patty
—**—