Greenwash & Public Relations

Puerto Rican citizen groups are protesting two renewable energy projects: a 30 megawatt solar energy project in Yabucoa by Western Wind Energy corporation from Vancouver and a 75 megawatt windmill array in Santa Isabel by Pattern Energy of San Francisco. The reason: these projects will threaten scarce farm land on the food dependent island. Read More

An advertisement flooding airwaves across India would have you believe that a company called Vedanta is a creating a product called happiness. But London-based Vedanta Resources has attracted the ire of environmental activists and human rights groups like Amnesty International who have accused the company of exploiting indigenous communities - such as the Dongria Kondhs of Niyamgiri in Odisha - without due process. Read More

Bell Pottinger, the London-based public relations firm, has been working for Yemen's National Awareness Authority, which is run by the nephew of Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The organization has been accused of spreading propaganda on behalf of the government. Read More

Tar sands from Alberta have enabled Canada to become the largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S. Tom Corcoran, a Washington lobbyist, is paid to promote this rapidly growing industry that produces some of the most emissions-heavy gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel on the planet. Read More

In 2000 British Petroleum launched an expensive ad campaign, re-branding its corporate image into the eco-friendly "BP: Beyond Petroleum." We said it then. When a company spends more on advertising its environmental friendliness than on environmental actions, that's greenwash. Three long weeks into the BP oil disaster roiling the Gulf of Mexico, CorpWatch's December 2000 skewering of its new image sadly, bears repeating. Read More

Multinational industries like tobacco and alcohol have responded to increased global public pressure for accountability around corporate operations by creating Voluntary Codes of Conduct to self-regulate their behavior. But how are the results measuring up? Read More

Entergy Nuclear (part of the broader Entergy energy family) is spinning off its northeastern U.S.-based nuclear power plants into a related limited liability corporation, Enexus. Stakeholders in Vermont, home of the Yankee Nuclear power plant, are less than happy, with Entergy also reneging on prior commitments to cover eventual plant decommissioning costs, potentially stranding taxpayers with much of the bill. Read More

Touted as the first step in a major regional integration project, the 225-kilometer TransCaribe pipeline travels underground across Colombia's Guajira Peninsula to the gas refineries of Maracaibo, Venezuela. Protesting the mega project's impacts on the peninsula's indigenous communities, the Wayúu community of Mashiis-Manaa is leading the struggle against oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela. Read More

The old American Smelting and Refining Company (Asarco) copper smelter in El Paso, Texas, which has spewed out toxins for over a century, has been granted a new five-year permit. This is despite the fact that it violates international laws by polluting communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Read More

SHELL has abandoned its sponsorship of one of Britain's most prestigious wildlife photography exhibitions after protests by environmental groups. Read More