The Art of Camouflaging: Unravelling the Motives and Consequences of Greenwashing

Abstract

Current trends are driving the youth to fanaticize organic and eco-friendly products. These demands, along with the current situation of the depleting planet, have paved the way to encourage producers to produce sustainable and planet-friendly products. But has this been for the good? The companies claim to be sustainable and gain consumers while not doing what they claim to do. This is called greenwashing. In other words, greenwashing is a destructive and dishonest method of falsely representing a company's sustainability. Companies should be held liable if they make fraudulent statements. This research has been done tounderstand what greenwashing is, what companies and their ways of following this menace, their impacts on the environment, society, governance and consumers, what ESG is and a detailed case study of companies like Apple, Tesla and Volkswagen. The study also had a few suggestions on what we, regulatory authorities and companies,can do to gain control over greenwashing and make this planet a better place to live.