How to Spot Greenwashing Claims When You Travel

Finding legitimately eco-friendly travel options is difficult, not to mention time-consuming. The gap between sustainability claims and practices can be quite large, and greenwashing isn’t always easy to identify.

But there are signs to look for. Researchers in Turkey recently identified five key categories to describe the most common forms of tourism-related greenwashing: eco-certifications, inadequate waste management, misleading carbon offsetting claims, destination-based overconsumption, and the use of the “green development” label to mask social injustice and environmental harm.

“Businesses facing demands for environmental and social responsibility frequently engage in gestures that are largely for show,” the authors wrote in a paper published in May in the journal Frontiers in Sustainability.

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned, the paper makes clear, but there are also ways to cut through the noise. Independent and robust certification systems play a huge role; local businesses are also important, since corporate chains are often associated with problematic greenwashing, particularly at the luxury level. “Sustainability must not be viewed as a communication strategy but as a structural commitment that is measurable, inclusive, and ethically embedded,” the authors wrote.

The first thing to keep in mind when you’re planning your trip is that it is going to have a negative impact. Any company telling you that it helps the environment, as opposed to explaining what it’s doing to reduce its footprint, is a giant red flag. Everything beyond that takes a little more effort to spot. Consider these things as you book your travel.

Do Those Little Cards Asking Me to Reuse My Towels Do Any Good?

Linen reuse programs, where you decline daily replacement towels and hopefully sheets, have become standard—and they do, in fact, save enormous amounts of water, as well as detergent and energy. If you’re traveling, you really should participate; many people still don’t.

In terms of assessing a hotel’s green credentials, though, a towel program should be standard practice.

PSA for any hotel operators: According to social psychology research, more people will participate if you use a “general norms” approach in presenting it. Placards should say, “Join your fellow guests in saving water”—as opposed to pitching it in more altruistic terms like “Help save the environment by reusing towels.”

Look for Substantiated Claims

The best way to evaluate a hotel is to look for credible third-party certifications from programs that set scientific benchmarks and involve mandatory audits, such as the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and EarthCheck. The more widely-known LEED certification, the platinum standard in particular, is best-in-class in terms of a hotel’s construction but doesn’t tell you much about its daily operations or local environmental and economic impacts. In nature-rich regions, the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance also certifies hotels that meet certain sustainability and biodiversity conservation standards.

What to avoid: self-created credentials or eco-awards. Those signs on websites and at hotel check-in desks—“Best green hotel!” or “Voted most sustainable hotel in the city!”— are often marketing ploys or the result of some kind of paid promotion.

Many companies make zero-waste pledges but often rely on single-use products that are said to be composable or biodegradable but are not actually composted; they also use energy and new natural resources to produce, even if they’re composted later. Others make plastic reduction pledges that are often narrow in scope, referring to single items such as cups or cutlery but ignoring others; or switching to boxed water instead of bottled, even though the boxes are made with plastic and are not very recyclable.

Unfortunately there’s no easy tool for fact-checking such claims, since there are effectively no regulations governing what companies can say about how eco-friendly they are.