Ford wins greenwash award
Ford Motor Company has won Corporate Watch (US)'s Earthday 2000 Greenwash Award, for the transnational corporation which best managed to bury its polluting record under mountains of "environmental" advertising and public relations babble.
Corporate Watch cited Ford's April 15 "Heroes for the Planet" concert in San Francisco and "one of the most expensive and intensive environmental advertising campaigns the world has ever seen" as reasons for its decision.
Ford, the world's third largest company according to Fortune 1000, recently announced that all corporate brand advertising will have an environmental theme. It expects to spend as much on greenwashing as it does on rolling out a new line of cars.
The company also bought exclusive sponsorship and nearly 40% of the pages in Time magazine's special Earth Day 2000 edition, "How to Save the Earth and the Heroes for the Planet Who Are Making It Happen". Even worse, Ford is the exclusive advertiser in two special issues of Time For Kids, reaching 2.8 million students in US primary schools.
The Union of Concerned Scientists states that Ford's cars and light trucks are the worst carbon emitters of any major auto maker and that, over the last 10 years, Ford's average vehicle emissions increased by 7.4%, the most of the three major US automakers.
Corporate Watch gave runners-up awards to the World Bank (for selling its bonds as "socially responsible investments"), Monsanto and the Council for Biotechnology Information (for launching a $250 million campaign to convince the world that genetic engineering is safe) and Royal Dutch Shell (for its "Profits and Principles" advertising series).
The booby prize went to ExxonMobil for "not even bothering to cover up their role in global warming".