greenwashing

“Toyota” announced a new eco-conscious AI copilot at the DC Auto Show yesterday, which promises to reduce environmental impact by up to 10% – but it turns out the whole thing was a prank, and the prank makes a real point about Toyota’s tendency towards greenwashing. The announcement involved a press event at the National Press Club, along with official-looking press release and even a whole website. The press release fooled some (including Carscoops, who then issued a mea culpa). But it was all…

Too Long; Didn't Read- Running compute jobs at a time and place when the electricity grid energy mix happens to be greener is not enough to reduce computing emissions. - To reduce their emissions, compute jobs need to run when demand is low; target stable electricity grids; and verifiably use curtailed electricity or run on genuinely additive renewable electricity. - The environmental challenge of computing is not energy efficiency, but energy demand. Because renewable energy can only power less than 13% of global…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain From the nutritional traffic light system displayed on a box of cereal, to the efficiency ratings we look at when buying a house, ratings and labels help us work out how to spend money responsibly. A new scheme from the UK's financial regulator also aims to use them to help you invest responsibly. The Financial…

The world’s first transatlantic flight with 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has been attacked as “greenwashing” by critics. The Tuesday trip from London to New York on a Vrigin Atlantic 787 has been celebrated by airlines and politicians as a “milestone” in the journey to net zero. Scientists and climate campaigners, however, have poured scorn on these claims. Opinions are divided over the potential of SAFs, which derive from various alternatives to fossil fuels. For Tuesday’s flight, the…

Toyota is still continuing its old ways of greenwashing and opposing electric vehicles, despite a change in CEO earlier this year from anti-EV stalwart Akio Toyoda to former Lexus chief Koji Sato, who had promised a more EV-friendly approach. Toyota has a long history of opposing electric vehicles, both through lobbying and disinformation in its marketing. The company has consistently been the most obstructive global automaker when it comes to electrification and among the slowest to scale up its…

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe is fed up with companies exaggerating their environmental credentials. “There’s far too much greenwashing in the system,” he said in a recent interview. For Scaringe, it’s all too easy for a company to obfuscate the source of its power consumption, especially when it doesn’t actually create any new capacity for renewable energy. And consumers aren’t discerning enough to tell the difference. “This is just so conceptually complex,” he said, making a clear distinction between companies that buy…

The Biden administration is working on modernizing the country’s oil and gas leasing program. Companies that want to drill on public lands will have to pay higher fees and will have to meet stricter requirements on where they can operate, according to a rule proposed by Department of the Interior onThursday.Why Banning TikTok Won’t Protect Our PrivacySince 1960, the price of lease bonds has been $10,000. The new rule proposes an increase of the minimum lease bond to $150,000, and the minimum statewide bond to $500,000.…

Oil and gas giant Shell has walked back the greenwashing image that it had worked so hard to foster over the last few years. The company has moved away from its previous strategy to slowly decrease oil production this decade. It’s back to (openly) drilling the planet dry for profit. Top 5 Shopping Tips for Amazon Prime DayEarlier this June, Shell’s leadership announced a hard shift back to steadying current oil production to appease investors, according to Reuters. Doubling down on this new strategy, Shell CEO Wael Sawan,…

Being green can make a company look good––and who wouldn’t want to work for a business that says it’s doing a stellar job with sustainability?  But in a world of greenwashing (or even greencrowding, greenhushing and greenshifting), consumers and workers are asking more questions about the green promises that companies are making.  That’s particularly the case with Gen Z workers, who are the future of the workplace. One in three (31%) of them would turn down roles in companies with poor ESG…

This article features an interview with Lubomila Jordanova, founder and CEO at Plan A. Jordanova will be speaking at TNW Conference, which takes place on June 15 & 16 in Amsterdam. If you want to experience the event (and say hi to our editorial team!), we’ve got something special for our loyal readers. Use the promo code READ-TNW-25 and get a 25% discount on your business pass for TNW Conference. See you in Amsterdam! In 2016, on a surfing trip in Morocco, Lubomila Jordanova experienced a…