The Swedish Greenwashing Prize – more than a decade of ironic awards highlighting misleading claims

Each year, for over a decade, Friends of the Earth Sweden has announced a winner of its Swedish Greenwashing Prize – an ironic booby prize that turns the spotlight on misleading and false claims.

The award is an important catalyst for debate on greenwashing and awareness on the issue, highlighting greenwashing by companies as well as authorities and politicians.

On 24 October 2022 the Svenska Skogen campaign suddenly shut down its website, silencing the PR platform of forest owners in Sweden. On the same day, Friends of the Earth Sweden announced the winner of its annual Greenwashing Prize, which just happened to be the Svenska Skogen PR campaign – as “a schoolbook example of greenwashing”.

One of the claims made by the PR campaign was that Swedish forests were managed in a way that “creates the conditions for species and new life”. This is a misleading claim. About a thousand forest species in Sweden are currently threatened, and more than a third of them are directly affected by clear-cutting. Another example of greenwashing by the campaign was a photo of a Canadian nature reserve which was used to illustrate the excellence of Swedish forestry.

The Svenska Skogen campaign is not alone in its use of greenwashing. An audit by the EU Commission showed that 42 per cent of statements about the environment online were exaggerated, false or misleading. So there is evidence that greenwashing is increasing on a wide scale.

Friends of the Earth Sweden works systematically to highlight and scrutinise greenwashing. Since 2009, the organisation has selected an annual winner of its Swedish Greenwashing Prize – an ironic booby prize that turns the spotlight on organisations that “falsely present their activities as sustainable”. FoE Sweden uses a broad definition of greenwashing that includes other actors such as political parties or authorities that have failed to fulfil their environmental promises or have been misleading in their communications. Nominations for the Greenwashing Prize are made by the public, and Friends of the Earth’s board of directors then selects the candidates for the final vote. The winner and other finalists are all invited to a dialogue so that they can give their views on the issue.

Charlotte Lundqvist from Friends of the Earth describes the award as a catalyst for debate on greenwashing: “The award has contributed to greater scrutiny of greenwashing in the media, and to wider public awareness of greenwashing and its consequences”.

In 2019 the prize was won by the oil company Preem. The company was planning a massive expansion of its oil refinery at that time. The plans, which were later shelved due to widespread protests, would have made Preem Sweden’s largest emitter of fossil fuels, doubling its annual emissions from 1.7 to 3.4 million tonnes. At the same time Preem was promoting its plans as part of preparedness efforts in editorial adverts, as well as highlighting its work on “green” diesel made from pine oil. Greenpeace Sweden compiled and analysed Preem’s misleading adverts under the banner Preemwashing. For example, there are editorial adverts with headlines such as “Preem has the lowest carbon dioxide emissions in Europe”, “New fuel lets you fly without anxiety” and “When the crisis comes to Sweden – Preem meets Swedish preppers” – each of them with misleading messages.

Another winner worth mentioning is Swedish airline Svenskt Flyg, which was singled out for its inaccurate calculations of its climate impact by stating emissions per seat instead of its total climate impact. AP Fonderna, the Swedish national pension funds, has won the prize twice – for its extensive investments in oil companies despite its sustainable investment goals and claims of being a “world leader”.

There is also a whole group of winners that includes authorities and politicians who have given misleading information or broken promises, such as the Swedish Transport Administration’s work on the Stockholm bypass motorway and the Environment Minister at the time, Andreas Carlgren, who claimed it was an “environmental and climate-friendly alternative for Stockholm”. Charlotte Lundquist believes it is important to scrutinise those in power from a greenwashing perspective, although she adds that the most impactful winners of the Swedish Greenwashing Prize have been companies. She also sees potential for more nominations of think tanks and financial actors in the future.

“Ultimately, we need legislation and action by the authorities to put an end to greenwashing,” she says. “So far, there have been too few cases that have led to fines. This is a problem. So more resources are needed to pursue cases in court. It is also vital that we and other actors in civil society continue to scrutinise and highlight examples of greenwashing,” adds Charlotte. “We know from experience that this is of great importance.

So what does the Svenska Skogen website look like today? As of April 2023, it is still closed due to “work in progress”. Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth have already started work on selecting the winner of the Swedish Greenwashing Prize for 2024.

Anna Jonsson