When Sustainability Is Only Marketing

At conscious consumers we are concerned about bad practices like deforestation, the pollution, the overexploitation of resources, land dispossession or human rights violation. We would like to rid the world of this. So “we want things that are not related to exploitation,” says Austrian manager Werner Boote.

We look for sustainable and fair products. “But we will not get laws just with our purchase”, because in the current system human lives and the planet do not matter. “Consumerism hides everything under a layer of cotton candy,” says the author of the documentary The Green Lie, released in 2018.

‘The Green Lie’ tackles the marketing, public relations and corporate social responsibility of large companies that tick off now-booming trends like green practices.

In his journey through Austria, Indonesia, the United States, Brazil and Germany together with the environmentalist Kathrin Hartmann, Werner investigates what is behind the sustainability of iconic products such as the now “eco” electric car, a waste of CO2.

And what he discovers is that “the green lie” was fabricated in the early 1970s, when the population’s concern for the environment began, something to which power systems, based on the control of capital, had to respond.

“Governments and institutions are mere puppets of industry”

This is explained by linguist Noam Chomsky, who became America’s critical conscience by opposing the Vietnam War, supporting the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and denouncing Ronald Reagan’s dirty war.

The nonagenarian, for years linked to the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), reveals that “governments and institutions are mere puppets of the industry”, so we citizens must take action.

The formula he proposes to “eliminate the need to resort to the green lie” is to submit the power system to popular control to create a real democracy, without hierarchies, which Werner supports by suggesting that “the power of companies must reach its end”.

We are not alone even though we have been disconnected

It is not enough to change the shopping basket but the way of producing and considering our needs. That is why the demonstrations calling for ” climate justice ” are taking to the streets around the world.

#FridaysForFuture, Extinction Rebellion or The Green Deal are some of the most active global mass movements that seek to stop the green lie and the institutionalized plundering of the environment.

We already say out loud that we buy things that we do not need and we begin to see that “we are not alone”, even though we have come this far “disconnected from our power” for having believed that alone we could not do anything. But everything is connected, explains the filmmaker.

Green labels tinged with injustice and new sources of CO2

Brazil is presented as a showcase for the functioning of the world economic system. Source of resources such as corn, soybeans, sugar cane and meat, many of the green labels come from lands expropriated from indigenous peoples by their corrupt leaders so that large agribusinesses can prosper.

And in Indonesia, the European Palm Oil Alliance, which is linked to the industry, sells palm oil as sustainable to disengage from logging and forest fires that are rapidly destroying the rainforest and traditional ways of life.

This places criticism of the labels and certifications that companies invent according to their interests on a platter . It will be necessary to watch who is who in the great sustainable and eco market.