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“It’s Not Easy Being Green”: The Greenwashing of Environmental Discourses in Advertising
Abstract
Under the political framework of free-market fundamentalism, corporations are appropriating environmental discourses through green capitalism and greenwashing. For environmental emancipation to occur, it is important to problematize the corporate discourses that put a price on nature and obfuscate the domination of nature by capital. The authors use an environmental political-economy framework to examine the ways particular products are represented through television advertising. Using a multimodal critical discourse analysis, they analyze three representations—Clorox Green Works cleaning products, the Ford Escape Hybrid, and Toyota Prius motor vehicles—in order to deconstruct and analyze how specific advertisements operate and how they contribute to problematic environmental discourses.
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“It creates skepticism and confusion among consumers while, to a larger extent, eliminating the demand for innovative green products [4,5].”
From Are You Environmentally Conscious Enough to Differentiate between Greenwashed and Sustainable Items? A Global Consumers Perspective (2020) · cites this paper as [4]
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Research works printed but not linked: 19
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Urbański, M., & ul Haque, A. (2020) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su12051786 · Cited by 153
Metadata
- Authors
- Budinsky, J., & Bryant, S.
- Affiliations
- York University (CA)
- University of Windsor (CA)
- Venue
- Canadian Journal of Communication
- Published
- 2013-05-16
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 207-226
- ISSN
- 0705-3657 (ISSN-L)
- 1499-6642
- OpenAlex
- W25851410
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 5.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Canadian Journal of Communication (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Environmental Sustainability in Business
- Social Sciences › Communication › Rhetoric and Communication Studies
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Cultural and political discourse analysis
- Keywords
- greenwashing, environmental discourse, television advertising, green capitalism, market fundamentalism, commodification of nature, Toyota Prius, hybrid vehicles, cleaning agents
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: “It’s Not Easy Being Green”: The Greenwashing of Environmental Discourses in Advertising. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.22230/cjc.2013v38n2a2628
- The paper
- Budinsky, J., & Bryant, S. (2013). “It’s Not Easy Being Green”: The Greenwashing of Environmental Discourses in Advertising. Canadian Journal of Communication. https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2013v38n2a2628
