Green branding and misleading sustainability claims by companies, institutions, or policies.
GRAIN’s report tracks the carbon credit projects Bayer, Cargill and other agrichemical companies are pushing on Asia’s farmland: farmers locked into decades-long contracts dictating their practices, getting just about 10% of the revenue, and bundled into buying seeds and pesticides.
The New York State Attorney General’s Office and the Environmental Working Group sued Brazil’s JBS and the US-based Tyson Foods over allegedly misleading “climate-friendly” beef labels. Both cases settled in 2025, yet “natural”, “recyclable” and “zero additives” claims still flood the shelves.
Ÿnsect, the European insect-protein unicorn that raised USD 625 million, has been wound up by a French court. A UK Government-commissioned life cycle assessment also shows insect meal’s carbon emissions far exceed soybean meal’s — the capital narrative of “eating bugs equals eco-friendliness” is being punctured by full-chain data.
In this model village for rural revitalisation, coaches carry visitors along the same route almost every day—yet the scorched paddy bunds beneath the rice ears, scattered fertiliser bags and pesticide bottles, and ever-worsening light pollution never feature in the script.
Meituan has funded environmental organisations dedicated to monitoring food-delivery plastic pollution, yet their critical voices have gradually faded. Two veteran environmental advocates compare this to the 2004 Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) case, noting that the balance of power between businesses and public-interest organisations has quietly reversed.
Repórter Brasil built a traceability database combining satellite data and on-the-ground collaboration with indigenous communities, proving JBS was not “unable to trace” but actively used three-legged journeys to launder cattle from deforested ranches into the supply chain, ultimately prompting six major European chain supermarkets to boycott.
Meituan, a major generator of food-delivery plastic waste, has begun funding environmental organisations working on plastic reduction. Spanning fundraising ethics to corporate PR tactics, Shan Shui Conservation Center co-founder Sun Shan and freelance environmental writer Ma Tianjie ask whether public-interest organisations can hold their independence against polluter funding.
Coke’s profit code is hidden in public water supply, government-subsidised sugar and cheap caffeine. Bart J. Elmore’s The Coca-Cola Empire writes this “scavenger”-style plunder—and the plastic and obesity bills it foists off—into history.
Bunong woman Langheng has guarded a 2,282-hectare community forest in Cambodia for years, yet chainsaws devour the woodland in secret after dark. REDD+ is designed to convert forest carbon into community conservation funding, but “additionality” hurdles and profiteers bypassing consent make it ever harder for indigenous peoples to defend their land.
The Jester, the student newspaper at Wageningen University, argues that ethical labels such as Fairtrade and organic certification merely repackage the longing for liberation as product codes – and that under capitalism, ethical consumption does not exist.
