I Can Save the Planet by Eating Fake Meat: My Complicitness in Greenwashing

On the right, you’ll see an image of fingers pointing at one person. The white colonizers embodied an individualistic ethos when they began homesteading and landgrabbing, roving their way across the Western landscape as they took indigenous people’s lands, moving America’s social landscape from collective to individualistic. This notion came from the American West, down through the presidents of the 20th century. In 1928, American president Herbert Hoover codified earlier settler notions of “rugged individualism” where it’s up to each of us to make a difference in our personal, familial, vocational, and public lives.

Though I do not deny that I (and any other “I” reading this) does bear responsibility for our actions, I do think that pointing the finger and shifting the weight of issues, like pollution and climate change do not bare logical scrutiny once historical context is accounted for. As such this essay explores how corporations and government telegraph and blare visual and multimedia messages to keep pointing the fingers at us and shift the blame at those of us outside of those spheres of powerful influence.

Smokey the Bear as Symbol of Individual Guilt

Before I argue why STEM literacy, in this case climate change literacy, helps me see through the blame shifting governments and corporations engage in, to shift the blame to us citizens and consumers, I wanted to introduce a seemingly innocent PSA from the USDA’s Forest Service. I am using this PSA because I am targeting those of us outside of powerful spheres of influence. I want us–particularly of Generation X and the Baby Boomers–to search back in our minds to simpler times, when cartoon bears went shirtless, so we wouldn’t burn down forests. I was born in 1973, so this image of Smokey the Bear was outdated when I started seeing Smokey the Bear PSAs on TV. If you click on the video below,

you’ll see Smokey the Bear forest fire 1980’s; it’s an ad (A PSA) I saw quite often. The government bought a lot of ad time on 1980s TV, drilling the “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires” slogan into many of my fellow Gen-Xer’s young and plastic brains. I never believed I was the only person in the world who could prevent forest fires, but that ad and that slogan put the onus on us individual citizens.

When anyone’s a kid, they feel like the world revolves around them; they are the masters of the universe (just ask my six year old son). However, the bigger truth is that most of us are like ants within a larger colony. Sometimes in the colony, our fellow ants are not being careful, and it puts us all in danger. As this National Geographic Society (2023) shows, 80 percent of wildfires point to humans who caused them.

This same Nat Geo (2023) article also points out that climate change has a lot to do with the conditions that make wildfires more prevalent. As the scientific consensus bears out, fossil fuel burning is the biggest culprit of global warming. While I am one of the billions burning fossil fuels, I’m not the queen ant ranks in the colony, such as a major corporation. Corporations do nearly ¾ of the polluting responsible for climate change (Axelrod, 2019). So while I admit that burning fossil fuels comes from humans and that only humans can prevent forest fires, I see this “Only You” move as a distraction technique, given that corporations and governments that allow corporations to pollute actually bear out the most culpability. (Axelrod, 2019). How does this relate to greenwashing and plant-based foods?

Eat Plant-Based Food and Save the Planet

At first glance, one could say that my climate change literacy about my individual responsibility of preventing wildfires would apply to purchasing plant-based meat. When I buy a plant-based product, I’m helping save the planet and preserve natural resources, in the same way that Smokey’s “Only You” tagline hands me so much individual power. In fact, plant-based meat corporations like Impossible will suggest a similar “Only You” power to us consumers. In the screenshot below, a person can see the “you are using” language.
Notice how this puts me, the consumer, in the position of the queen of the colony. Purchasing this product helps me decide the fate of the whole.

(Screenshot by author)

After doing more research, I found plant-based meat companies have llax standards for reporting climate data. According to a 2021 New York Times article, by Julie Creswell, many different environmental activists take issue with these numbers being reliable and credible data. The NYT article features interview excerpts from Ricardo San Martin, a research director on alternative meats, from UC Berkeley. As San Martin points out, “‘Everybody has a supply chain, and there is a carbon footprint behind that chain’’”. He goes on to say, “But it is really a black box. So much of what is in these products is undisclosed.” In other words, nobody is really clear on the exact numbers and all the processes and procedures these companies use to measure and reflect actual data.

As such, I’m skeptical of the power this infographic gives me. I am not a manufacturer of Impossible Sausage–nor of any other food products–somehow I’m the one who is cutting down on water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and land use. I certainly understand the surface of the message: buying this product represents me helping them help the planet avoid more global warming.

Even when taking a charitable view of the Impossible corporation, I still see them engaging in what climate experts and scholars call “greenwashing.” Social scientists Matthew Megura and Ryan Gunderson who researched eight oil companies, define greenwashing as “the use of green images and rhetoric despite, or to mask, environmental harms and manipulate consumers” (2022). Essentially, greenwashing is the practice of corporations offering solutions to the climate change crisis that usually put the onus on individuals buying their products, so that they (the corporations) can do their best to fight climate change.

So, why am I talking about greenwashing and plant based meat companies?

1 ½ years ago, I decided to go pescatarian. For those who don’t know, pescetarian diets include fish and seafood as the sole (no pun intended) animal protein sources (Jennings, 2023). Otherwise, pescatarians eat plant-based (vegan and vegetarian) protein sources, including nuts, legumes, nut butter, cheese, milk, etc. The protein sources can not be made of land animals (cows, pigs, chickens, etc.). Though I ate plant-based protein before I went full pescetarian in September of 2022, I didn’t have much acquaintance with the plant-based protein world. Particularly, I hadn’t really paid attention to the way plant-based meat companies marketed themselves. In the photo below, anyone can see how Impossible Sausage frames consuming their products as helping to fight climate change and preserve water and land. Recalling the screenshot from before:

(Screenshot by author)

Think of what the Impossible Brand is claiming here. When anyone eats their products, they help preserve nearly 80 percent of the world’s water supply, reduce the usual carbon emissions that happen during shipping, and use nearly ½ less the land compared to when people raise, slaughter, and ship pork. Why wouldn’t anyone feel better about that? Along with having no nitrates or nitrates (curing salts), no cholesterol, and no trans fats, Impossible Sausage is also creating a product that helps combat climate change. Simple, right? Well, as usual with climate change and environmental issues, it’s not quite as Impossible as it seems.

Greenwashing and Plant-Based Protein

To be clear, I don’t want to disabuse anyone of the notion that eating plant-based protein is somehow an unworthy effort. I myself will continue to eat plant-based protein because if I can’t get fish or seafood, it’s the only other kind of protein I can really stomach.

However, the idea that consuming plant-based products works as a way to mitigate climate change constitutes what scholars, journalists, and other environmental mavins call “greenwashing.” Greenwashing is what corporations do about their practices when they describe how they are sustainable and environmentally friendly to the public. As Climate Change Resources (n.d.) points out, companies that greenwash can be intended to effect positive change in fighting global warming and resource decimation.

So, a little bit of research into climate change and greenwashing can yield a much bigger understanding of how companies minimize climate change impact. Companies like Impossible suggest that their product uses the best in modern technology to reduce their carbon footprint. As mentioned earlier, Megura and Gunderson talk about this as techno-optimism. This optimism is similar to the optimism bias that essentially bases the future on the hope that things will work out in the end. They situate their work between pro-science advocates that science is the sole solution to the climate crisis while they are also between the science-skeptical left who say that the socially-situated nature of science makes it open to data manipulation and false solutions (York and Clark, 2010). In the context of the Impossible corporations consumers, they most likely court people who affirm climate change in some regard; however, those people and their leftist commitments may keep them from wanting to double check the veracity of the Impossible corporations’ claims related to fighting climate change. Again, here’s a screenshot from the side of one of their products:

(Screenshot by author)

Notice the specificity of these figures: 79 percent, 71 percent, and 41 percent. These are the kinds of exact figures one may find in a scientific report. However, these numbers may be more aspirational or estimated instead of coming from hard data.

My Conclusion and My Complicitness

Even after critiquing governments and corporations shifting the blame to us through PSAs and food labels, as I find sources that clarify the greenwashing, and I listen to my own intuition about these products, I found out that I have a position: greenwashing is wrong.As Paul Graham brings up in his 2004 “The Age of the Essay,” writing an essay about anything isn’t about defending a particular position. Instead, the roots of essay writing relate to Michel de Montaigne’s use of the word “essayer” for the writing he did back in 1580. “Essayer” translates into “to try.” As Graham points out, writing helps us (the public) find out what we are ultimately trying to say. In the case of this essay, I’m exploring how climate change literacy, historical research, and critical analysis of government and corporate sources afford me some visual to see through the opaque data-reporting practices make it impossible (pun intended) to know how much plant-based meat companies actually mitigate climate change. Writing this essay has me trying to figure out how I’m complicit in these corporations greenwashing schemes.

All the same, I know I will continue eating these products because they hurt my stomach less than land meats. Thus, I find myself at a crossroads. I need these products, so that I can keep a high amount of protein in my diet. At the same time, I’m pretty clear that eating these products are doing minimal things to actually help battle climate change.