This show is all about greenwashing, and in particular a drive coming out of Norway to get companies, all companies, to be more honest about the environmental impact of their products and services. Greenwashing is not a Norwegian issue, but there is one organisation in Norway that has now got a few hundred companies to sign a pledge to adhere to ten key principles of Greenwashing.
SKIFT is a membership organisation of Norwegian industry leaders. Its goal is to attract the most climate ambitious businesses in the country so that it can demonstrate that businesses can reduce emissions and move to a low carbon economy with innovation rather than too much regulation.
The ten principles it is asking corporates to sign up to encourage them to ensure they take more care with their choice of words and their actions. SKIFT now wants to make these principles more international and think some of the work in Europe . such as recent European sustainability taxonomy will be a great help in what they hope to encourage businesses to do voluntarily.
I spoke with Skift CEO Bjorn Haugland about the campaign, its objectives, particularly as it seeks to gain international momentum and how he sees it applying to the ocean and shipping businesses, as well as how he can make sure a signing up to a code against greenwashing is not in itself greenwashing.
But I started by asking him just how bad greenwashing is, and how companies are being both encouraged, and forced, to choose their words carefully
