For the first time, environmental protests against greenwashing burst onto the scene at the event that is by definition Italy's most popular national gathering: the Sanremo festival.
It is Friday, 4 February, and at the Sanremo festival it is the moment of Rappresentante di Lista, who chose Be My Baby by the Ronettes for the evening dedicated to cover versions. At the end of the performance, singer-songwriter and producer Cosmo, their guest, shouts: "Stop greenwashing!" And so the issue, which had been at the centre of social media controversy for days, lands at that precise moment on the Ariston stage, before the eyes of the 14.7 million people watching on television.
At the centre of the debate is the festival's main sponsor, Plenitude, the new brand replacing Eni luce e gas, which transforms the traditional red carpet into a green carpet and also appears during the broadcast. Following its transformation into a benefit company, the six-legged dog turns green by entering the solar photovoltaic and electric mobility business and promising to supply 100 per cent decarbonised energy to all customers by 2040. The target to be met by 2030 is a 25 per cent cut in the entire company's emissions, with carbon neutrality to be reached by 2050. The commercial partnership with Rai, whose financial value has not been disclosed, also includes the calculation of the festival's CO2 impact.
To express their firm opposition to the partnership, activists from the environmental organisation Greenpeace managed to climb over the barriers and stage a brief incursion onto the green carpet.
"Eni may well continue to fund cultural events, but that will not change the fact that the only culture it promotes is that of fossil fuels, extractivism and injustice," thundered Fridays for Future, inviting their followers to express their opposition on social media with the hashtag #Sanreni. A hashtag also taken up by Legambiente, in a post arguing that "the real turning point would be to focus on genuinely sustainable activities".
Activists contest the fact that, according to 2017 data, Eni still figures among the thirty global companies responsible for the largest quantities of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. The decarbonisation that has been promised – Greenpeace argues – is proceeding too slowly, given that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ipcc) has urged the international community to do everything possible to curb climate change by 2030, and no later. The 2021–2024 strategic plan also envisages allocating 65 per cent of fixed capital investment to fossil fuels and continuing to produce them until 2050. Indeed, production will increase until 2025.
There is nothing inherently wrong with communicating results achieved in the environmental field and using them as a marketing lever: this is known as a green claim. Environmentalists, however, label Plenitude's operation as greenwashing — that is, to draw on the definition given by the Treccani dictionary — a "communication and marketing strategy" that "presents its activities as eco-sustainable while seeking to conceal their negative environmental impact". Or more precisely, in the context of this specific case, presenting as accomplished certain objectives that at the moment exist only on paper.
The story goes that the first person to coin this term was American environmentalist Jay Westerveld. It was 1986, and at the time it referred to hotel chains that invited guests to reuse their towels to avoid the environmental impact of excessively frequent washing, when in reality they were driven by the pure desire to save money.
Few people at the time imagined that 36 years later there would be guidelines and rulings on greenwashing. In regulatory terms, European Directive 29/2005 on unfair commercial practices does not address the issue directly, but subsequent interpretations have underlined the need for communications to be clear, accurate and unambiguous. Similarly, the Italian Consumer Code (Legislative Decree 206/2005), subsequently expanded by Legislative Decrees 145 and 146 of 2007, "promotes adequate information, correct advertising and transparency and fairness in contractual relations".
Transparency and correctness that are equally indispensable when it comes to the environmental performance of companies, products and services, which has become a purchasing criterion for an ever wider audience of consumers. To find a specific rule (albeit a non-binding one), one must look to the Codice di autodisciplina pubblicitaria (Advertising Self-Regulatory Code). Article 12, to be precise, makes it clear that commercial communications, when claiming or evoking environmental benefits, must "be based on truthful, relevant and scientifically verifiable data". And they must not be ambiguous: consumers must be placed in a position to understand whether the environmental claim refers to the company as a whole, to a product or to a part of it.
Following the first rulings by the Autorità garante della concorrenza e del mercato (the fine imposed on Eni itself in 2020 amounted to 5 million euros), in 2022 an ordinary court became involved for the first time. Specifically, the court of Gorizia, which ordered the Friulian company Miko to withdraw an advertisement. Through injunctions, newspaper headlines and social media posts, greenwashing has made its way into public opinion to the point of becoming a priority. And its appearance on the most mainstream stage of all — Sanremo — is yet further proof of that.
