Contents (go to): Introduction ¦ Sustainability ¦ Greenwashing ¦ Water ¦ Summary
Introduction
Group 6 prepared a Global Citizenship Development Education (GCDE) Workshop on Sustainability, Greenwashing and Water for sustainability.
GCDE Workshop’s agenda
Sustainability
There are many ways to support sustainability.
Personality types and sustainability Lego activity.
Group activity to build something to support a Sustainable Development Goal.
Greenwashing
Group matching activity.
1. What is it?
A deceiving practice to spin companies and products as “green” and eco-friendly, more than they actually are in reality. It’s considered a misleading marketing tactic that works by appealing to customers who want to be more environmentally-sound.
Coca-Cola Life was a low-calorie version of the regular Coca-Cola launched worldwide in 2013. It was discontinued in 2020 due to a poor customer reception. Coca Cola Life contained 30-50% less calories than the original, instead of high-fructose corn syrup, it had a mix of sugar and stevia-based sweetener substitute.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_Life.
2. PR Stunts
Recent years have seen consumers more environmentally-conscious about their purchases. Marketing products as “green” is a way for companies to jump on the trend, without actually changing most (if any) of their business practices.
A recent poll conducted by Harris found that 72%, 48%, 92%, 52% of CEOs felt that their company has engaged in greenwashing.
The original study was conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Google Cloud with the participation of 1,491 executives across 16 markets between December 2021 and January 2022. A summary of the report appears in Google <https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/sustainability/new-survey-reveals-executives-views-about-sustainability>, and includes a link to the full report. Click the sample below to see an infographic of the summary of results.
Group activity: Spot the Greenwashing
Water
Water is the foundation of sustainability, an essential requirement for life on Earth.
Global water injustice
Considering that the population of the USA is reported as 337 million people, their water consumption would be 764,000 million litres or 764 million tons of water per day.
China is the most populous country in the world with an estimated 1,400 million people, their water consumption would be 1 billion litres or 1,000 million tons of water per day.
Source of population data: Census (2024) U.S. and World Population Clock. [Online]. Available at: https://www.census.gov/popclock/. Accessed: 19 June 2024.
Summary of the GCDE Workshop
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