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greenwashing
How You Can Help Save Boreal Forests in 2026
Want an easy New Years' resolution? Buy 100% recycled or alternative fiber toilet paper instead of rolls made from virgin forest pulp.
Jan 01, 2026
North America’s boreal forests are crucial for wildlife and the climate, but we’re literally trashing them to make pulp for toilet paper and other disposable paper products.
Companies are clear-cutting a million acres a year, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The northern boreal forests are Earth’s largest terrestrial biome. They’re the breeding grounds for 3-5 billion migrating birds that populate our backyards. And they’re a key carbon sink, storing 20% of global forest carbon and 50% of global soil carbon.
Studies show these forests have been overharvested and degraded to such a degree that the ecological damage will be difficult to reverse. They’re increasingly beset by global warming, melting permafrost, fires (including multi-year, spontaneously reigniting “zombie fires”), and pests, which threaten to destroy them and release their carbon back into the atmosphere.
If every American bought just one roll of toilet paper made from recycled paper rather than a conventional forest-fiber roll, it would save 1.6 million trees, 1 billion gallons of water, and 800 million pounds of greenhouse gases.
The United Nations recently warned of an approaching tipping point that could turn them from carbon sinks to carbon sources. That would be catastrophic. The recent COP30 climate summit, held in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, was billed as “the forest COP.” But its outcomes were dubious for tropical forests—and nonexistent for boreal forests.
But if climate delegates don’t protect them, consumers can—by buying 100% recycled or alternative fiber products instead of toilet paper made from virgin forest pulp.
A market for these alternatives is emerging. The US toilet paper industry is worth $42 billion, but a whopping 68% of US consumers surveyed want eco-friendly toilet paper made from recycled pulp, bamboo, or cornstalks.
If every American bought just one roll of toilet paper made from recycled paper rather than a conventional forest-fiber roll, it would save 1.6 million trees, 1 billion gallons of water, and 800 million pounds of greenhouse gases—the equivalent of taking 72,000 cars off the road for a year, NRDC found.
Eco-friendly toilet paper start-ups have a $1 billion toehold on the overall market so far—little more than 2%. But they’re growing fast. Imagine how many trees, how much water, and how many emissions we’d save if they gained a 68% share.
The big paper companies are imagining it, too. Procter & Gamble (P&G) makes Charmin, the top US toilet paper brand. This year it launched a bamboo version. That gives the company a green-sounding talk point, and a theoretical way into the growing alternative market. But it isn’t really available in stores and doesn’t do anything to change P&G’s bad practices.
It’s well documented that P&G makes regular Charmin by clear-cutting Canadian boreal forests for pulp, cutting down old-growth groves that have stood for a century or more. Only about 20% of these old-growth trees are left.
Any remnant wood left (called “slash”) after logging gets burned, and the land gets plowed and sprayed with glyphosate (RoundUp), eradicating formerly diverse ecosystems that caribou and birds depend on. They’re replaced with monoculture plantations of softwood trees planted in tight rows, worsening vulnerability to wildfires.
Yet P&G has the chutzpah to claim its slash-and-burn practices “absolutely prohibit deforestation” and “incorporate sustainability.” No wonder the company is being sued for greenwashing, with plaintiffs demanding it be held accountable for “egregious environmental destruction of the largest intact forest in the world” and making “false and misleading claims of environmental stewardship.”
Ultimately though, the power to change practices resides with consumers, not courts. Some 90 million Americans buy regular Charmin—and another 5 billion consumers worldwide buy P&G products. Collectively they have enormous power, provided they’re alerted to the problem and aren’t fooled by greenwashing tactics.
But if those conditions are met, consumers can save the boreal forests, one roll at a time.
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Shell’s Marketing Head Has No Business Leading the Assoc. of National Advertisers
Few brands have been the subject of more legal, ethical, and regulatory action for their advertising than Shell.
Oct 30, 2025
Last Wednesday, the Association of National Advertisers, an American trade group representing some of the world’s biggest brands and advocating on marketing public policy, appointed the CEO of Shell Brands International, Dean Aragón, as their new president.
That same day, half a world away in the Philippines, survivors of Super Typhoon Odette filed suit against Shell for their decades of contributions to climate disasters like the storm that destroyed their homes.
There is no better contrast to show how far corporate leaders have strayed from common sense when it comes to climate strategy in 2025. Cowed by headlines and short-term thinking, marketers and brand leaders of all kinds have stepped away from taking vital steps needed to protect the planet and the economy that connects us all.
Putting the head of Shell’s marketing into a leadership role at the ANA is a bizarre and self-destructive decision. Shell is the subject of dozens of legal and regulatory actions around the world for misleading marketing, and continues to produce products that directly harm dozens of ANA members in the insurance, health, and food sectors.
A forward-thinking organization with its members' interests at heart wouldn’t put their leadership in the hands of a company that harms every other sector on the planet.
The ANA is made up of companies whose business models are fundamentally threatened by climate change, which is caused by Shell's products—from Piedmont Healthcare and the American Heart Association dealing with diseases caused by extreme heat, to Mars and Anheuser-Busch struggling with higher commodity prices caused by flood and drought.
Shell has recommitted to producing more oil and gas, and less clean energy, despite their own research from the 1970s and 80s onward showing that fossil fuel production posed a fundamental threat to the global economy and the consumers who use their products.
But promoting Shell as a leader in marketing is particularly laughable. Few brands have been the subject of more legal, ethical, and regulatory action for their advertising than Shell.
Their advertising campaigns have been banned in the UK, ruled to be misleading in the Netherlands, cited as evidence in lawsuits in the United States, and are also laughably bad at times. There is no reason to be elevating the mind behind projects like “Shell Ultimate Road Trip”—a Fortnite experience that attracted single-digit users and never worked properly, or cringe-inducing, disturbing AI videos of engineers talking to their "younger selves."
In short, appointing the CEO of Shell's marketing as chair is a guarantee of the ANA losing credibility in the eyes of regulators and organizations with sustainability agendas worldwide. It’s also a sign of a lack of original thinking as the climate emergency grows and clean energy becomes the dominant form of new energy worldwide.
There is no worse representative for the marketing industry, either for regulators or for the rest of the economy, than Shell, and the ANA will lose credibility with Dean Aragón as its figurehead. A forward-thinking organization with its members' interests at heart wouldn’t put their leadership in the hands of a company that harms every other sector on the planet, or one that continues to rely on the old tropes of climate delay and denial.
The marketing industry should be looking to companies in clean energy, healthcare, and the circular economy—all growing sectors with pressing needs for communication expertise—to help chart a sustainable future. Fossil fuels and Shell represent the past and a dead end for marketers everywhere.
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Abolish the World Cup!
We’re football fans who see no alternative: The CO2 party must end.
Oct 23, 2025
Football is more popular than Jesus of Nazareth and John Lennon combined. And at first glance, it seems like a pastime that doesn’t harm the environment: Players just need a ball, some space, and the desire to run. But the data are shocking: Football is directly responsible for 0.3-0.4% of the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to Denmark's emissions. The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2024 the sport generated more than 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as a source of energy, equivalent to 150 million barrels of oil. Every match at the men’s World Cup finals emits between 44,000 and 72,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases, the same as 30,000 to 50,000 cars on British roads each year. Recent studies estimate that emissions from the cup will range between 1.65 and 3.63 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent between 2000 and 2026.
Let’s also consider football’s basic equipment: boots and balls. Generations of kangaroos have been slaughtered, with the blessing of the Australian government, as raw material for “k-leather” boots, while balls from Pakistan are made from petroleum-derived synthetic leather, rubber, and cotton extracted from plant species, and leather and glue obtained from animals slaughtered before their natural lifespan. The 60 million balls sold in 2010 travelled from the sewing workshops in Sialkot to the professional football pitches of Europe and the Americas. The balls emerge from these frequently clandestine sewing workshops to a carbon cycle of transport companies, customs administrations, equipment, the advertising industry, sporting goods retailers, and department stores. The chain turns a ball costing 63 rupees (€0.62) into a product retailing for over €100.
Think also of the water and chemicals used in the construction and maintenance of stadia, the electricity needed to watch matches and bet or report electronically on them, and the impact of tourism.
Sponsorship by companies with high CO2 emissions alone is responsible for 75% of sports emissions, as it stimulates demand for highly polluting products and lifestyles. The large eco-laundering multinationals use football to cover up their environmental shame. For example, shortly after Repsol spilled thousands of barrels of oil on 1,400 hectares of Peru’s Pacific coast in 2022, killing native life and destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people, the company signed a sponsorship with the national team. The motto of the project, also associated with supporting youth and women's representatives, was “Let's look to the future.” In Spain, Repsol and Petronor have signed an agreement to supply renewable energy to Athletic Club de Bilbao that supposedly demonstrates the multinational’s commitment to decarbonization. But the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority found Repsol distorted its environmental commitment by highlighting production of synthetic fuels and biofuels, which only account for a small fraction of its core business—fossil fuels.
Instead of greenwashing and pseudo-reforms, football needs a drastic transformation to disrupt its environmental impact, corruption, systematic human rights violations, sponsorship by highly problematic companies, and money laundering by bookmakers.
Qatar’s bid for the 2022 World Cup in 2009 promised to be CO2-neutral. The damage caused by constructing facilities, desalination, and water use in an arid climate would be offset because, according to the organizers, future generations would enjoy the facilities. There is no evidence for that.
As we all know, the candidacy was successful, despite evidence of vote buying. Implementation resulted in total disregard for labor and human rights: massive exploitation of migrant workers, workplace accidents, derisory wages, and impossible working hours. The pollution generated by air conditioning stadia to withstand Qatar’s climate, as well as the 150 daily flights of attendees, confirm the New Yorker’s verdict: FIFA is “a rancid institution.”
600 million trees would have to be planted to counter the climate calamity caused by Qatar 2022. Despite the trademark Sustainable FIFA World Cup 2022TM, the environmental plundering of the event was greater than that of any other World Cup or Summer Olympics. As usual, the United States provided the largest number of international tourists, which resulted in the emission of 191,055 tons of CO2, including a staggering 14,700 tons produced by private jets.
Le Monde exposed the environmental propaganda as a “mirage.” Scientific American called the event a “climate catastrophe.“ This was “the dirtiest World Cup“ in history, bathed in oil and corruption. The French collective Notre Affaire à Tous explained: “By presenting the World Cup as carbon neutral, FIFA makes [...] fans believe attending such an event has no impact on the environment, which is clearly incompatible with the international World Cup travel that affects greenhouse gas emissions.”
The Swiss Commission for Equity received complaints from Notre Affaire à Tous along with Carbon Market Watch (Belgium), the UK’s New Weather Institute, Alliance Climatique (Switzerland), the Netherlands’ Reclame Fossiettvrij, and Fossil Free Football (international). The commission ruled FIFA had lied by claiming the cup was the first event of its kind to be “totally carbon neutral.”
The 2026 men’s World Cup is expanding to include 48 national teams. For the first time, matches will be held in three huge countries: Canada, Mexico, and the United States, across four time zones, in 16 venues separated by several thousand kilometers, each with derisory public transport. Five and a half million spectators are expected, who will need to use the map to locate the venues: Mexico City will mark the southernmost point, Vancouver the north, Boston the east, and San Francisco the west. In terms of logistics, practically all travel will be by air due to a primitive railway infrastructure. Radio France refers to this as a “very carbonated cocktail.” The New Weather Institute with Scientists for Global Responsibility estimates that aviation emissions “will increase by 160% to 325% in each of the three tournaments in 2026, 2030, and 2034” compared to recent World Cups.
In addition, in the scheduled period—midsummer—96% of the US population experienced extreme heat for one or more weeks in 2023, and 45 cities had very high average temperatures. 2024 broke numerous records due to unprecedented drought and rainfall.
The environmental impacts in Mexico are horrific. The Akron stadium is close to the Primavera de Guadalajara reserve, home to pumas, a near-extinct species, deer, golden eagles, and migratory birds. The conservation of wild fauna and flora is at serious risk due to the World Cup, while the presence of 50,000 spectators and 4,000 cars will cause significant tensions in water resources in Mexico City and Monterrey (also next to a key biological corridor).
The World Cup is “simultaneously the greatest sporting festival on the planet and a sordid commercial machine that carries an enormous human and environmental cost, for the benefit of torturers, exploiters, and insatiable greedy.” Ecology only matters in football as an instrument of public image for the governing associations, host countries, and sponsors.
Instead of greenwashing and pseudo-reforms, football needs a drastic transformation to disrupt its environmental impact, corruption, systematic human rights violations, sponsorship by highly problematic companies, and money laundering by bookmakers. The World Cup's claims of carbon neutrality are just rhetoric. In reality, it has become a “greenwashing World Cup.”
We’re football fans who see no alternative: The CO2 party must end.
Abolish the World Cup!
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