Greenwashing in Corporate Sustainability Communication: Why do we focus on Pictures?

At the very core of the greenwashing tactic is the misrepresentation of sustainability efforts through distorting the language used in the communication of these sustainability efforts. At the Honest Picture Project, we focus on the visual language used in achieving this deception. This page provides the justification for our unique focus on the sustainability picture perspective to greenwashing.

This is a diagrammatic representation that shows how both honest and dishonest companies can use honest and dishonest pictures. It also shows the context of the picture use and its impact on the company. Note: The solid lines with double headed arrows represents a dialectical relationship between two entities and the dashed lines with double headed arrows represents a continuum between two entities

The Influence of Social Practices on Picture Use

We also conceive that for a particular company, the picture use in sustainability communication is constrained by overall sustainability discourse both within and outside of corporate communication. What we mean is that certain pictures have come to symbolise certain sustainability issues resulting in their repeated use. A typical case in point is the use of the pictures of polar bears in stories about climate change which has come to be institutionalised both in the media and elsewhere leading to their repeated use. Similarly, we argue that in corporate sustainability communication, a number of socially agreed icons or symbols like the pictures of happy people, wind turbines or unspoiled nature are repeatedly used so that rhetorical associations are drawn between the pictures and specific sustainability themes rather intuitively. This is similar in conception to the concept of a terministic screen coined by famous rhetorician Kenneth Burke which stands for a selection of shared vocabularies that have come to define a certain social reality.

What this means is that while the nature of picture use is influenced by the wider sustainability discourse, you can have similar looking pictures that are deemed to be honest or dishonest depending on the context of their use (Please see the page on methodology for a definition of an honest picture). It also means that in arriving at an understanding of the nature of picture use in corporate sustainability communication, it is also important to understand the nature of picture use as a practice outside of the corporate discourse and within the wider sustainability discourse and even beyond. This explains why we take a broad-based approach to study pictures in sustainability communication produced by actors such as media, regulators, guidance providers and others besides our main focus on corporate sustainability communication.

Consequences of Dishonest Picture Use

Linked to misalignment between their sustainability talk and action, companies are often accused of hypocrisy and greenwashing. We argue that the use of dishonest pictures has similar consequences for the companies.

Sustainability reports, filled with dishonest pictures can look like advertisements for products. Colourfully designed; filled with overly positive claims and dishonest pictures, sustainability reports while attempting to portray an image of social and environmental consciousness can have an entirely opposite effect. Use of dishonest pictures can mean that even legitimate and praiseworthy stories of genuine sustainability activities may be seen with scepticism, derision, and may result in a possible backlash from stakeholders. This can negatively impact the company’s legitimacy, reputation, and trust. It may appear to the reader that visual rhetoric has been used to obfuscate from the company’s real detrimental impact on society and the environment.

While the corporate sustainability report is supposed to be a representation of the company’s morality and ethical behaviour, the use of dishonest pictures is guided by an intention to supress or deceive. So, irrespective of whether the company is ethical in terms of its behaviour, the use of dishonest pictures implies dishonesty in its communication and can lead to claims of dishonesty in its behaviour, rightly or wrongly.

What is Being Done About Dishonest Pictures?

In the latest report on the global trends in corporate sustainability reporting by KPMG, it was found that nearly all of the biggest companies of the world (G250 or 250 of the biggest companies in the world by revenue) report on sustainability. More than three quarters of these companies’ report using the reporting standard of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). While the GRI provides the standards that are most popular, the sustainability reporting guidance landscape consists of various other players with interconnections, conflicting interests, and varied approaches to sustainability reporting. These include regulations such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in specific jurisdictions, global goals such as UN Sustainable Development Goals, voluntary reporting frameworks such as the GRI and CDP, as well as popular rankings and rating agencies such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) and Sustainalytics. While all of these different players aim to create or foster a comprehensive common language for companies to report on sustainability, they fail to consider picture as a mode of communication that is widely used in sustainability reports and offer no guidelines on its use.

Comparison of the different actors in the sustainability reporting landscape that offer guidance on visual content vs written content. While on the left half of the image, it can be seen that there are no current guidelines provided by any of the guidance providers on picture use, there is an abundance of guidance providers on the use of the written text.

The Continuum of Picture Use

In the page that focused on our methodology, we talk about a hypothetical contimuum of picture use in corporate sustainability communication consisting of honest picture use and dishonest picture use as the two ends. The nature of picture use for any company will always lie at some point within this continuum. Now, let us also consider a hypothetical continuum for the honesty of companies with honest and dishonest companies as its two ends. The possible scenario for the nature of picture use in sustainability communications for these companies is as shown in the diagram below. It is to be noted that both honest and dishonest companies can make use of honest and dishonest pictures. We propose that that legitimacy to continue to operate as a business is the desired objective for a company.

The different actors in the sustainability reporting landscape emphasise verifiable and comparable sustainability performance data on aspects such as carbon emissions reductions or efficient energy as indicators of corporate sustainability. There seems to be widespread agreement that although pictures have an unimpeachable role to play in the sustainability report, they are to be ignored when it comes to assessing the sustainability report. So, report makers continue to embellish reports with platitudinous pictures which are in the realm of a dream, an aspiration for a bright future for the earth and its people.

This, we argue is a perversely counterintuitive approach. In playing the numbers game, companies spend a lot of resources in ensuring that their sustainability metrics match up to exacting standards. However, in communicating these efforts, they rely on emotional appeal through pictures, a lazy approach given their publication in the sustainability report, an artefact that is supposed to represent the morality of the company.

The Use of Dishonest Pictures: Deliberate or Not?

Given what we describe above as a lazy approach, there are those who might argue that the use of dishonest pictures might neither be deliberate or intentional. It may very well be the case that once the company has decided the written content in a sustainability report, it is then passed onto a visual designer/agency whose job it is to make the overall content more visually appealing. In doing so, the following may be the manner in which the task is undertaken:

“Much like the wardrobe mistress behind the scenes of a play who at the last minute may be found straightening a tie, adding feathers to a hat, or tying a colourful sash, the graphic designer has been regarded as someone who adds a bit of spice to the scene of a text” (Karen Schriver, Dynamics in Document Design, p.6)

Even if this were to be the case, should the company in whose name the report is published be absolved of its responsibility?

The distinguished professor of organisational communication, Dennis Mumby argues that the communicative choices of an organisation and their inherent and underlying meanings are reflective of the morality of the organisation. In their book on deceptive marketing communications, Prof. David Boush and his colleagues have a rather interesting take on marketplace communication- they state that communication of this nature is always intentional. This is because they are planned and executed by professionals with the necessary knowledge, expertise, and access to resources to ensure the validity of the communication that they put out in the public domain. So, the company ought to always be made accountable for it. If we extend this argument to picture use in sustainability reports, we could argue that, at least for large companies with big marketing budgets, the use of dishonest pictures is a deceptive practice and amounts to greenwashing for which they should be made accountable. This is irrespective of whether it is a result of deliberate design.

In the world of corporate sustainability communication, honest picture use is essential to maintain transparency and integrity. Greenwashing, characterized by dishonest picture use, can lead to dire consequences for companies, including a loss of trust and reputation damage. Regardless of intent, companies must be accountable for the visuals they use in their sustainability reports. The honest picture project aims to guide sustainability communicators toward a more genuine and responsible approach to picture use, ultimately fostering a culture of transparency and trust in corporate sustainability efforts.

NOTE: This page is best read in conjunction with the page on methodology which introduces our approach to analysing pictures