Why Greenhindering is the New Greenwashing
As greenwashing gets more public scrutiny, a new phenomenon seems to offer a far more challenging barrier to sustainability and climate action: greenhindering. By normalizing unsustainable practices, agents of socialization — such as media, companies, and influencers — make these behaviors harder to eliminate. It’s time to hold these powerful actors accountable for shaping social norms in the wrong direction.
Earlier this month, the New York Times published an article about the growing trend of “ultra-personalized beverages filled with syrups, powders, fruit chunks, boba and plenty of caffeine” served in coffee shops. The article appeared on the cover of the newspaper’s food section, accompanied by a large image of a customer holding two drinks from Dutch Bros.
What immediately stood out to me was that the drinks were served in large, single-use plastic cups, with the customer holding a disposable plastic straw next to each one (see picture above). The image — and others throughout the article — seemed to ‘scream’ coolness, highlighting how trendy these personalized drinks have become. By extension, it unintentionally made the disposable cups and straws seem cool as well. In doing so, the Times not only made the use of such disposable items seem more normal but also glorified them as part of a highly desirable practice, especially among young people.
I call what the Times did in this case greenhindering, which refers to the glorification and normalization of unsustainable behaviors or practices, whether intentional or unintentional, by agents of socialization, which make those behaviors and practices much more difficult to eliminate.
You might wonder — what do I expect from the Times? After all, it’s companies like Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Dutch Bros that are selling these beverages in disposable cups, not the New York Times. That’s true, but here’s how I see it: these companies are serving drinks in disposable cups because they are practicing sustainability-as-usual, where profit maximization is the first priority, and sustainability comes second, at best. These companies are unlikely to move away from sustainability-as-usual on their own unless there’s systemic change, which requires both top-down (regulation) and bottom-up (norm entrepreneurship and activism) efforts.
That’s why the role of agents of socialization is so critical. These agents — including media organizations, social media influencers, and companies via their advertising and marketing campaigns — play a key role in shaping people’s values, behaviors, and lifestyles. As Genner and Suss point out: “Agents of socialization shape our norms and values regarding appropriate behavior and how we interact with others and highly influence our views and perspective on our community, our country, and the world at large.” This is especially true for consumer socialization, which “provides a framework for analyzing the influences on/sources of how people learn to enact their roles as consumers in society,” according to Chinchanachokchai and Gregorio.
Think about it this way: We take cues on how to behave, what’s right and wrong and what’s acceptable and what isn’t from our environment, both physical and digital. When multiple agents of socialization suggest that a throwaway culture is an acceptable way of living, we pay attention as evident by the continuous dominance this and other unsustainable behaviors in our lives.
Let’s take a look at another example. In November 2022, the Harvard Business Review celebrated 100 years with a cover asking “What Does Your Company Really Stand For?,” a reference to its main article. In the background, a white single-use coffee cup appeared, with checkboxes for diversity, respect, and quality and so on. I found this choice to be odd — why showcase a disposable coffee cup, one of the most notorious symbols of a wasteful culture, on such an important cover?
Many people, including I assume those responsible for the design of the cover, may wonder what’s the big deal? It’s just a coffee cup many people use in the office. That’s true, but at the same time, it’s not just a cup but also what it represents: A reassurance that disposable coffee cups are a standard part of professional life, reinforcing their presence as normal and acceptable.
It reminded me of a 2014 Funny or Die video, in which Christina Hendricks comes to a moder office, acting as if this is an office in the Mad Men days, where you could smoke in the office, have a cocktail during lunch and used a typewriter for writing. Hendricks’ behavior looks weird because it represents a different era with different social norms, practices, and technologies. There is a clear reason why HBR, for example, didn’t put a cocktail, cigarette, or a typewriter on its cover — they don’t belong to the modern office. However, by putting a disposable coffee cup it signals that this item is not weird at all, but rather an integral part of a 21st century office life.
Another key example of greenhindering can be found on social media, where both platforms and influencers promote mindless consumption, actively celebrating and promoting a culture of consumerism. While there is a growing countermovement, like deinfluencing and underconsumption core, which aim to challenge this consumerist hype, social media still encourages many to consume more. This isn’t just about influential individuals using their talent and status to make money by promoting products, but about a digital structure that integrates the attention economy with consumption, transforming mindless scrolling into mindless buying.
One example of this optimization of social media platforms is the shortened trend cycles that have led to microtrends. As Nurayn Khan explains, “these shortened trend cycles have distorted consumers’ mindsets. A constant overturn and resurgence of trends discourages the development of one’s personal style, and instead encourages overconsumption and impulse purchasing. To stay on trend, consumers turn to cheaper, yet unethical, fashion brands.”
Thus, platforms like TikTok and Instagram — and the influencers thriving on them — have become significant barriers to sustainability by exercising greenhindering. After all, it is much harder to make the case for sustainable living when the online spaces where people construct their social identities, and the influencers they look up to, send the opposite message, both implicitly and explicitly.
Greenhindering is prevalent not only online, but also on TV and in films. A 2021 report that examined 32 popular television shows from the 2019–2020 season found them to be filled with plastic pollution. For example, according to the report, “single-use plastics were common on scripted TV, with an average of 28 single-use plastic items per episode.” The Plastic Pollution Coalition later introduced the Begley-Cohen test, aiming to help viewers “quickly identify if the movie, show, or other media you’re watching portrays the world free of plastic pollution that we are working to create.” To pass the test, TV shows or movies must either have no single-use plastics visible on screen, or, if single-use plastics do appear, they must be portrayed or discussed as problematic. Now, ask yourself: how many of your favorite TV shows and movies actually pass this test? My guess is not too many.
Companies, of course, have their own share of greenhindering when it comes to marketing campaigns. Now, I want to be clear that marketing your own products should not be considered an act of greenhindering, even if these products are single-use water bottles or fast fashion. Marketing of such products falls under sustainability-as-usual — if you are, for example, Danone advertising Evian water bottles, it is annoying, but that’s the company’s business, and it wants to maximize profits from its unsustainable product, so it uses marketing to sell more of it.
However, if you are a company advertising financial services or apparel and you use plastic water bottles or disposable coffee cups in your ads, that’s a different story. In all honesty, this is probably not too prevalent and therefore less important. What is more significant when it comes to companies’ marketing efforts is that they normalize a sense of business-as-usual, where consumption is seen as the best reflection of the good life, and the more you consume, the happier you are. The real danger here is the false perception that we still live in a world where consumption is the solution rather than a driver of the key challenges we face.
Why greenhindering is the new greenwashing
The headline of this piece isn’t just designed to capture attention, but also serves as a reminder of the significance and impact of greenhindering. Not too long ago, greenwashing was a key barrier for progress, with some companies attempting to camouflage incremental advancements (at best) through misleading or exaggerated claims. While it remains an ongoing issue, new regulations, activism, and a much more skeptical public have likely weakened greenwashing as a barrier for change. Greenhindering, however, presents a far more critical challenge to advancing sustainability and fighting climate change.
Why? Because of the impact of agents of socialization on social norms. Defined as “the predominant behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and codes of conduct of a group,” social norms, according to Cialdini and Jacobson “influence the expectations, opinions, and actions of group members and facilitate social coordination and solidarity within the group.” Schneider and van der Linden add that “social norms are amongst the most effective levers in the behavioral intervention toolkit for engendering large-scale behavior change.” These researchers, as well as others, highlight the key influence of social norms on behaviors related to climate change. When combined with the influence that agents of socialization have on social norms, you can see the scale of the challenge that greenhindering poses.
Social norms also affect the willingness of people to support regulation. This means that it’s not just their impact on bottom-up progress, but also on top-down processes, that makes the role of agents of socialization in sustaining or changing perceptions of what is considered normative even more crucial. Therefore, it is time for us not only to recognize that greenhindering represents a powerful barrier to progress on sustainability and climate change but also to start demanding that agents of socialization exercise responsibility and stop glorifying and normalizing behaviors and practices that should have become part of our past long ago.
Raz Godelnik is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design — The New School. He is the author of Rethinking Corporate Sustainability in the Era of Climate Crisis. You can follow me on LinkedIn.
