“Greenwash” is a popular word these days. Companies and even whole industries are constantly in the news for making false or misleading claims about their products or services. And government promises and actions on environmental issues are now being scrutinised like never before. This is great!

But flying under the radar, too often, are claims being made by some environmental groups, which in essence are just as much greenwash as the false and misleading claims made by industry and governments. What’s the difference between exaggerated and incomplete sales and marketing spin shovelled out by a corporation; a government’s “green” pitch or propaganda; and an environmental group’s smear campaign that’s based on materially false or misleading information? Not much in my view, which makes journalism (fact-based journalism) even more critical. Shouldn’t there be a level playing field for the truth?

Fortunately, we now have a definition of greenwashing courtesy of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Greenwashing is defined as “False or misleading information, either intentionally or inadvertently, regarding the environmental or sustainability attributes of a product, asset, and activity, which can have consequences on the assessment of financial and non-financial materiality.” (ISO 14100)

The definition may sound a little academic, but let’s use it to have a closer look at some of the environmental claims being promoted by Canadian not-for-profit, Canopy, in its ongoing campaign against paper packaging. On several counts, the ISO definition fits: Canopy is running a deliberate and very public campaign, nothing inadvertent there. The claim involves “a product, asset or activity” (the making, selling, and use of paper packaging); and it has potential “financial and non-financial” consequences (the loss of market or market share by the paper packaging industry). Canopy’s stated aim is to replace paper packaging with packaging made from agricultural residues such as wheat straw.

The remaining, and key element of the ISO definition above, relates to “false or misleading information.” With Canopy’s claims, this takes many different forms. For starters, unlike some other environmental groups, Canopy seems to favour glib and very general pronouncements without providing sources and data to back them up.

Lack of adequate and proper substantiation

For example, paper packaging is said to leave “a trail of deforestation.”[1] But no information is offered on exactly where, when, or how this occurs. Is it tropical hardwood forest? Are the trees felled for timber, or for tissue or graphic paper (newsprint)? These are not packaging grades. And where’s the proof that the forest is not being regenerated as forest? Such a broad smear of all packaging, without supporting evidence, is not credible.

On another occasion, Canopy claims beverage companies are “switching from single-use plastic to paper thereby trading one environmental disaster, plastic pollution, for another, mass deforestation.”[2] Again, we are left in the dark as to where this so-called “mass deforestation” is taking place.

If a corporation were to make such completely unsourced assertions like Canopy does, it would likely be rapped over the knuckles by the “false and misleading claims” people at Canada’s Competitions Bureau.

It is also frequently unclear whether Canopy is talking globally or in a Canadian context. It is, after all, a Vancouver-based group with three of its four declared areas of interest located on Canadian soil (the coastal temperate rainforest of the West Coast, the Great Bear Rainforest, and the Canadian boreal). In the absence of citing specific data or sources, readers of Canopy’s campaign material could be forgiven for assuming it is talking about the situation in Canada.

Consumer goods companies in Canada would never get away with such factual looseness under the Competition Bureau’s new regulations. The regulations require “adequate and proper substantiation (of information) ….”[3] Why shouldn’t environmental groups like Canopy be held to the same standard?

Deforestation

Take Canopy’s false and misleading claims about deforestation, for example. Unfortunately, there is widespread public (and media) confusion about what deforestation is and isn’t. From a dictionary point of view, it would be easy to conclude that deforestation is simply about removing trees, and that reforestation is about growing them back again. That’s what the commonly displayed images all show: a stark clear-cut, or a young green spruce stretching skyward.

But for people whose job it is to track deforestation and to do something about it, it’s a lot more complicated than that. The world’s forest scientists through the United Nations make a key distinction when it comes to removing trees from forest land. When trees are removed and replaced by agricultural crops, grazing land, residential subdivisions, or flooded to make hydro reservoirs, the forest is unlikely to come back to forest. That is called deforestation.

But if that forest land is regenerated as forest (either naturally or artificially through tree planting or direct seeding) then that is not considered to be deforestation. The land remains forest land where trees will be grown again. Logging by itself, then, is not deforestation. Only if the land is not returned to forest.

This is not an “industry” definition, nor a “Canadian” one. It is how 236 nations report data to the United Nations so that global and individual country rates of deforestation can be uniformly tracked, assessments made, and remedial action taken.[4]

A recent UN report estimated that nearly 90% of the world’s deforestation between 2000 and 2018 was the result of agricultural expansion, including almost 50% from cropland expansion and 38% from livestock grazing. Oil palm alone accounted for 7% of global deforestation. There’s not a word in this UN report about paper products, let alone packaging.[5]

It’s a similar story in Canada. The major cause of deforestation here is conversion of forest land to agriculture (44%); followed by mining, and oil and gas extraction (30%); what’s called built-up: industrial/commercial and municipal development including residential subdivisions (19%); hydro- electric development (4%); with forestry (primarily the creation of permanent forest access roads) responsible for 2% (or a mere 0.00029728% of Canada’s total forest lands, 1092 hectares out of 367 million hectares).[6]

Misguided and dishonest

Canopy, however, doesn’t seem to recognise the international definition of deforestation or any of this national and international data, preferring instead to focus on forestry and paper issues, and to lay all the blame at their feet. Instead of telling the world how many billions of trees are cut down to make way for agricultural crops (by far the major cause of global and Canadian deforestation), it trots out debatable estimates of how many billions of trees are cut down for packaging [7] (which, as noted above, doesn’t even rate a mention in the latest UN deforestation report).

This is a misguided and dishonest approach to a serious global problem, and makes a mockery of Canopy’s stated mission “to end deforestation.” To most people, ending deforestation would mean focussing on its major causes.

Canopy, however, seems fixated on paper issues, going so far as to recently make the curious (and false) claim that “virgin paper packaging is driving deforestation,” again without providing any back-up evidence or explanation.[8]

The implication that the mere fact of harvesting virgin fibres amounts to deforestation runs totally counter to the UN definition already outlined. If the forest lands were not replaced with new trees, yes, that would be deforestation. But in Canada, anyway, it is provincial and federal law to regenerate forest lands, as forest, after the harvest. In a Canadian context, then, this means paper packaging is not responsible for any deforestation. Canopy is implying the opposite.

Canopy does not seem to accept that there’s a huge difference between regenerating a forest, as forest, for its virgin fibres, and losing that forest entirely to a newly planted agricultural crop (say wheat) or to a building (say Canopy’s Vancouver head office). Now that is deforestation.

And when you think about it, Canopy’s latest position on virgin paper packaging doesn’t make a lot of sense, because paper fibres don’t last forever. With each recycling the fibres become thinner and weaker and need to be replaced with newer and stronger fibres. How does the packaging industry do this? With long-fibre softwoods that provide the strength properties that packaging requires.

Could these softwood fibres be replaced by something like wheat straw? Only to a very limited extent because wheat straw fibres are much weaker than softwood ones. And when protecting the contents of the package is the prime aim of the packaging, you don’t want too many weak fibres compromising its strength.

And it’s not as if the Canadian paper packaging industry uses a lot of virgin fibres anyway. Most paper packaging made in Canada is already 100% recycled content.[9] It is not made (as Canopy implies) with the “habitat of endangered species such as orangutans or caribou.” It is made from old used boxes collected from the back of factories and supermarkets, from offices, and from Canadian homes. And that’s been the case for 30, 40, 50 years or so. So no, Canadian paper packaging does not have a “crushing footprint” on the world’s forests, biodiversity, and climate.[10]

In fact, the Canadian industry led North America, and perhaps the world, in pioneering the further recycling of already 100% recycled content boxboard packaging like cereal and shoe boxes back in the 1990s. I know this because I headed the environmental council that co-ordinated it. Today, some 94% of Canadians can recycle a material that used to go straight to landfill.[11] But you don’t hear anything about that from Canopy.

Environmental groups have a social licence to speak up in the public interest, and that’s as it should be. But many of them also have a business interest (fundraising) and can influence whether consumers buy or avoid a product or service. Where does their social licence to tell the truth to the public begin and end? Shouldn’t they be held to the same greenwash standards that ISO and the Competitions Bureau have established?

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[1] Josée Breton, Canopy (media release), “Packaging Zeitgeist Expands to World’s Endangered Forests and Climate,” October 1, 2019, https://canopyplanet.org/news/packaging-zeitgeist-expands-to-worlds-endangered-forests-and-climate(accessed 29 November, 2024).

[2] Cait Green, Canopy, “From Selling Beer to Safeguarding Forests: My Journey from the Beer Industry to Environmental Stewardship,” September 13, 2024, https://www.canopyplanet.org/news/from-selling-beer-to-safeguarding-forests-my-journey-from-the-beer-industry-to-en (accessed 29 November, 2024).

[3] Competition Bureau of Canada. Its new regulations say environmental claims must have “adequate and proper substantiation in accordance with an internationally recognised methodology” and that it will target “materially false and misleading claims” and consider the “general impression” of a claim and its “literal meaning.”  https://competition- bureau.canada.ca/deceptive-marketing-practices/types-deceptive-marketing-practices/false-or-misleading-representations

[4] John Mullinder, excerpt from Little Green Lies and Other BS: From “Ancient” Forests to “Zero” Waste, 2021, www.johnmullinder.ca See also John Mullinder, “Deforestation in Canada and Other Fake News,” February 5, 2024, https://johnmullinder.ca/deforestation-in-canada-and-other-fake-news/ The UN definition of deforestation can be found in Global Forest Resources Assessment (2020) Terms and Definitions (working paper 188) 2018, pp-5-6, https://www.fao.org/3i8661en/i8661en.pdf

[5] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 Remote Sensing Survey https://fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/remote- sensing/fra-2020-remote-sensing-survey/en/

[6] Natural Resources Canada, The State of Canada’s Forests, Annual Report 2023, p.86. https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sites/nrcan/files/forest/sof2023/NRCAN_SofForest_Annual_2023_EN_accessible-vf(1).pdf

[7] Laura Repas, Canopy, “Paper Packaging Uses Three Billion Trees a Year,” 23 November, 2021, https://www.canopyplanet.org/news/paper-packaging-uses-three-billion-trees-a-year (accessed 29 November, 2024). See also John Mullinder, “Smearing Paper Packaging Seems to be Fashionable These Days. What are the Facts?” October 26, 2023,

[8] Canopy, LinkedIn post, 26 November, 2024 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/canopyplanet_pack4good-sustainablepackaging-forestconservation-activity-7267197953130262528-tkUd/

[9] Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC), “Most Canadian Packaging Board Now 100% Recycled Content,” (press release), Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC), September 12, 2019, https://www.ppec-paper.com/most-canadian-packaging- board-now-100-recycled-content/

[10] Josée Breton, Canopy, “Packaging Zeitgeist ….” ibid.

[11] CM Consulting, “Access to Residential Recycling of Paper Packaging Material in Canada.” October 2014,