Are Public-Interest Organisations Becoming Greenwashing Tools for Polluting Companies?

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A Note from Foodthink

“Humanity’s unsustainable production and consumption practices are pushing the planet towards destruction” – this is the opening line the United Nations uses to introduce 30 March each year as “Zero Waste Day”. For urban residents in China, most single-use plastic waste in daily life is linked to food consumption, particularly food delivery. The food-delivery industry has, single-handedly, created an enormous “waste sector”. Behind its rapid year-on-year growth lies a vast quantity of single-use plastics, making it a key driver of environmental pollution and a threat to consumer health. Who is to hold companies accountable for reducing pollution and protecting consumer health? Beyond the government, public-interest organisations representing the public’s interest can play a vital role – for example, by conducting research and advocacy to expose corporate pollution, urging companies to cut back, and holding them responsible for remediation. However, Foodthink has noticed that among the environmental organisations funded by the food-delivery giant Meituan, there are institutions dedicated specifically to reducing plastic waste. These organisations once voiced numerous criticisms of the food-delivery industry, with data-driven analyses that named names. Yet over the past two years, those voices have grown ever quieter.

So we cannot help but ask: what does it mean for environmental organisations when the very companies that generate pollution begin to fund them? And what does it mean for the environmental issues we care about?

In the 46th episode of our “Food Talk” podcast, we invited two veteran environmental advocates – Sun Shan and Ma Tianjie – to explore these questions. Using this as a starting point, we went on to discuss the complex relationships between the companies that create various environmental and social problems, the public-interest organisations that seek to solve them, and the dynamics between all of them and the government, the media, and the public. This article was compiled from that episode.

● Click the image above to listen to this episode.

Guests on This Episode

Sun Shan

Ecological practitioner and co-founder of the Shan Shui Conservation Center. She began farming in 2015, exploring the relationships between soil, agriculture, food, ecology and the self-sufficient lifestyle (homesteading). She now lives in Canada, where she runs Chi Garden – an ecological farm and fermentation kitchen. In 2024 and 2022, she attended the 16th and 15th Conferences of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Colombia and Montreal, respectively.

 

Guests on This Episode

Ma Tianjie

Freelance writer specialising in environmental issues. He has been engaged in environmental advocacy since 2004 and has served as a director at an international environmental organisation. He has long focused on environmental governance in China and has written analyses and commentaries for numerous media outlets. His new book, In Search of Green China, was published in February this year.

 

 

Host of This Episode

Tian Le

Founding editor of Foodthink and convenor of the Beijing Organic Farmers Market. He stopped ordering takeaways because he could no longer stomach single-use waste or the exploitation of delivery riders – yet he still feels guilt and unease about the various environmental and social problems generated by his everyday consumption.

 

 

I. Polluting Companies: Why Fund Environmental Organisations?

Tian Le: I would like to ask our guests this first – when a company like Meituan begins to venture into funding public-interest work, does it affect the independence and operating logic of environmental organisations that advocate for waste reduction and campaign against single-use plastics? Ma Tianjie: I think what is happening with Meituan actually shows that the relationship between businesses, environmental organisations and environmental issues has grown more complex. It is hard to say outright whether this change is for better or worse. When we entered the field more than twenty years ago, the dynamic between environmental organisations and polluting companies was relatively straightforward: environmental organisations and the media would criticise a particular polluter, the company would then be pushed to make some changes or commitments, and that chapter would close. Now, after being shaped by all manner of social movements, companies have evolved in how they respond to problems. Rather than simply meeting each challenge head-on – soldiers come, generals intercept; floods rise, earth holds – they think one step ahead: setting up their own foundations or funding existing ones, and directly participating in environmental initiatives. Companies have reinvented themselves as part of the so-called solution. In this situation, environmental organisations must keep a critical eye and carefully assess whether the solutions driven by corporations genuinely benefit the issues at hand.

● Click the image above to go straight to the first public notice for the SEE Zero-Waste Planet – Green Mountain Clean Nature Action, funded by Meituan.
● The second phase of this Meituan-funded project makes “zero-waste community building” and the “plastic-reduction initiative” its priority focus areas – the intent is fairly transparent. Click to view the funding details.
Sun Shan: There is a similar trend internationally. Take the UN Biodiversity Summit: biodiversity used to be a fairly marginal topic. In 2022, only 700 companies participated, but by 2024 that number had reached 3,000, with no shortage of firms from the food and agriculture sector. It was the most business-attended summit in the history of the event. In recent years, private companies have become ever more deeply involved in ESG – environmental, social and governance – actively learning from one another, organising forums, seeking to define their own ecological impact, and drafting industry standards. Their approach is already quite sophisticated. Many NGO researchers have joined corporate social-responsibility departments, helping companies tackle these issues with greater professionalism. Tian Le: I think what these companies are really doing is applying a principle that we as environmental organisations rely on: the precautionary principle. Companies don’t necessarily understand the nature of their own problems. They simply feel that rather than being berated by the public, the media and environmental organisations, it is better to present themselves as the ones solving the problem and to set the agenda themselves. We must tread carefully in responding to this shift in the relationship between companies and environmental organisations. Our concern is that when these polluting companies go on to fund the very environmental organisations that should be monitoring them, that funding could weaken organisations’ ability to critique and oversee effectively, and diminish their capacity to do more effective work on a given issue.

II. The APP Controversy and the Changing Fortunes of Grassroots Environmental Organisations

Tian Le: In fact, something similar happened more than twenty years ago. A multinational company called Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) was exposed by environmental organisations for deforestation in Yunnan. At the time, the company also tried to “greenwash” itself by funding environmental organisations, but faced widespread resistance. This episode is a very classic case in China of a grassroots environmental group going head-to-head with a multinational. Tianjie, could you briefly tell us the story from those days, and how environmental organisations responded? Ma Tianjie: Yes, this was a scandal around 2004. It began when APP set up a batch of pulpwood plantations in Yunnan. Greenpeace carried out a field investigation and discovered that the plantations had actually been established after primary forests were cleared. That same year, Greenpeace published an investigation report exposing APP’s deforestation, and a subsequent investigation by the State Forestry Administration also confirmed that deforestation had taken place. Many environmental organisations that took up the cause banded together to boycott APP, including a civil organisation called the Zhejiang Provincial Hotel Industry Association, which called on all its members to boycott APP products. APP responded by suing the association for defamation, but under intense public pressure, it decided to drop the lawsuit the day before the trial was due to open. After that, civil organisations continued investigating APP’s illegal activities in Yunnan and Hainan, engaging in a protracted tug-of-war that kept pressure on the company year after year. In the end, APP made an international commitment not to destroy natural forests.

● In 2004, environmental organisations unfurled banners at the deforestation site, protesting against illegal logging by APP in Yunnan and the planting of fast-growing eucalyptus plantations. Image source: Greenpeace

Tian Le: There was also a telling episode in between. While environmental organisations were criticising APP’s deforestation, the company suddenly donated a sum of money to a large, nationally recognised environmental organisation in China to sponsor its annual conference.

Ma Tianjie: Yes, that was part of their public-relations strategy: if you say I am not environmentally friendly, then I will donate to environmental organisations, join environmental campaigns, and build a greener corporate image. But that donation sparked enormous controversy within the organisation, and many members felt strongly that the money should not be accepted.

Tian Le: Teacher Liao Xiaoyi – the founder of Global Village, one of the most prominent home-grown environmental organisations in China at the time – was serving as a director on that coalition’s board. She immediately wrote an open letter declaring that she could no longer serve as a director, because she did not condone accepting the funding. Looking back, twenty years ago our environmental organisations could unite and take collective action against a polluting company. When faced with a corporate “buy-off”, they held firm on principles – at the very least, someone spoke out, and that person received considerable support and praise from peers. But over these past two years, it seems peers no longer even pay attention to such matters. Nobody is discussing how we should handle funding from polluting companies. What do you think has brought about this change?

● In November 2004, the Zhejiang Provincial Hotel Industry Association called on hotels across the province to firmly boycott APP paper products and their by-products. APP filed a lawsuit against the association on grounds of defamation. In response, twelve environmental organisations issued a joint statement of solidarity with the association. Image source: China Paper Industry Network

III. The Predicament Facing Public-Interest Organisations

Sun Shan: One of the reasons the grassroots boycott of APP was relatively successful, in the episode Tianjie just described, is that APP is a multinational corporation and there was already a comprehensive international record of the company’s deforestation across various countries. Our domestic environmental organisations were building on that existing body of work when they opposed the company’s polluting practices. But when we turn to the Meituan example, at present, neither China’s grassroots organisations nor its regulatory bodies are analysing, overseeing or monitoring the full behavioural footprint of companies – for example, creating a database that tracks where companies fall short across social impact, the environment and labour rights. In 2004, China’s grassroots environmental organisations had gained considerable momentum, producing some leading figures and a number of memorable public events. But twenty years on, the development of environmental organisations, the growth of ordinary people’s environmental awareness and the sheer scale of China’s economy are strikingly out of step with one another, and civil society remains underdeveloped. Grassroots organisations’ capabilities have improved to some extent, but compared with the scale of our economic growth, pollution and other social problems, they simply cannot keep up. Public-interest organisations lack not only the most critical element – funding – but also the soil in which civil society can take root, leaving us without sufficient capacity to confront ever more complex and opaque social problems. Meituan itself is implicated in numerous labour and pollution issues, yet we do not see enough discussion of those problems. People even feel the need to rationalise accepting its grants. To me, that is a rather saddening state of affairs.

● Issues surrounding food-delivery platforms – labour rights, food safety and the environment – have attracted widespread public attention; even film directors have turned their lenses on these topics. Yet to date, Meituan’s algorithmic systems, operational mechanisms and the social consequences they produce remain a “black box” to the public, insufficiently understood and examined. Image source: feature film Another Day Full of Hope

Tian Le: Yes, though the economy has grown rapidly, the funding and support received by organisations actually doing environmental work have not grown proportionately.

Ma Tianjie: Right. I would like to add one more point – in these situations it is not just businesses and grassroots organisations on either side. There should also be a regulator in the middle, but the regulator is “the elephant in the room”, essentially invisible in the discussion. What role is the regulatory system playing? I think this too needs to be discussed. One phenomenon we see today is that companies’ influence over rule-making within the regulatory system is growing ever stronger, particularly in international negotiation settings, where trade associations and business coalitions are very active. They have a keen instinct for shifts in the rules. The moment they sense that the rules of the game might be about to change, they intervene early to ensure the rules tilt in a direction favourable to their business model. They get involved with great professionalism, flying the banner of “evidence-based decision-making” to push back against the “precautionary principle” – meaning: if the evidence is not sufficient, do not rush to ban anything; let us research it for a few more years first.

Tian Le: The same thing happens in domestic policy-making. When the government drafts regulatory policy, it does not act entirely independently. Businesses’ influence over government is growing, while the power of environmental organisations and other institutions representing the public interest is weakening. Take the food and agriculture sector, for example: companies directly participate in drafting many food safety standards. They can push the government to amend rules, tilting policy in their favour. But on the side of consumers and smallholder farmers, there is simply no force of comparable strength to counter this influence. Standards championed by large companies often exclude smallholder farmers, and for us – organisations standing alongside smallholder farmers – getting involved in policy-making involves many difficulties. There is no funding support, and the process of research and lobbying is extremely time-consuming. So what we see is companies’ public-relations skills and agenda-setting ability growing ever stronger, including the use of media tactics to shape public opinion, packaging views favourable to them as “science” or “common sense” so that the public absorbs them gradually without even noticing. Meanwhile, grassroots environmental and public-interest forces are increasingly marginalised; most of the time, they can only clean up the aftermath after the rules have already been written and the policy has already been implemented. The balance of power has become strikingly lopsided, and the rules of the game are tilting, bit by bit, in favour of large corporations.

● In 2023, for instance, the State Administration for Market Regulation published a draft for public consultation of its Administrative Measures on the Quality and Safety Supervision of Edible Agricultural Products in Market Sales. However, the definition of edible agricultural products had the category of “dried” items removed, meaning that home-produced dried goods could no longer be sold directly unless the producer obtained a complex and expensive food production licence. In response, Foodthink joined forces with farmers, sellers, cooperatives, scholars, public-interest organisations and consumers to jointly submit amendment recommendations to the Administration. In the final regulation, the Administration adopted our recommendations. Click the image above to learn more about the process.

IV. How Public-Interest Organisations Can “Dance with Wolves”

Ma Tianjie: We were just discussing how, over the past twenty years, the ecosystem of the entire sector has shifted dramatically – particularly the shape of corporations. Meituan’s behaviour, for instance, does not produce a single, specific pollution problem. Rather, through its algorithms and logic, it exerts a systemic influence on the environment, making corporate accountability far harder to pin down. Moreover, companies are working hard to cast themselves as part of the solution, partnering with environmental organisations to steer the agenda-setting on environmental issues. When environmental organisations “dance with wolves”, the critical questions are: who sets the pace, and who holds the initiative? First, grassroots environmental organisations should critically evaluate corporate initiatives and establish clear boundaries and rules for engaging with businesses. Some international organisations with extensive experience in corporate advocacy already have precisely such boundaries in place – for example, it may be acceptable to appear alongside a particular company at the same venue or participate in the same platform or initiative, but borrowing that company’s money is not. Environmental organisations should also consider what direction they can steer a company through their participation in an initiative, and what more fundamental, systemic influence they might exert.

● Meituan habitually points to numbers to underscore the social value it creates in providing delivery rider employment, supporting small and medium-sized businesses and serving consumers – while sidestepping any discussion of the negative environmental and social impacts it generates. Image source: Meituan Q2 2020 earnings report

Tian Le: I have a further concern: if things continue as they are, could polluting companies and certain environmental organisations be forming a kind of collusion? As environmental organisations, our founding aspiration is to see pollution problems thoroughly resolved. Ideally, we should find ourselves with “no work left to do”. But the reality is that some companies, while generating pollution and reaping enormous profits, put up only a tiny fraction of the money to support environmental organisations, directing them towards superficial environmental actions – picking up litter, running recycling schemes. This way, the company maintains a good public image, and the organisation gets just enough funding to keep operating. But the problem is, if environmental organisations are too busy picking up bottles, they have no time to ask where those bottles actually come from, or why there is ever more waste. The result is a strange, vicious cycle – pollution is never truly resolved, businesses carry on as usual, and environmental organisations have instead become instruments of corporate greenwashing.

Sun Shan: Yes, this is genuinely rather frightening. It is even more visible at international negotiation venues. Outside the conference halls, all manner of companies and trade associations set up booths and run events – it is like a carnival, with corporate green messaging everywhere. But how much of that “green” is greenwashing – or worse, fake green? Many public-interest organisations at such venues end up lending companies their credibility, effectively helping them greenwash. Meanwhile, the genuinely “deep green” environmental organisations – small groups supporting Indigenous peoples’ land struggles and various environmental justice causes – have very little voice in those spaces.

Grassroots organisations face genuine difficulties just to survive, but no matter how the external environment shifts, we still need to look back from time to time and ask ourselves: what values do we actually uphold? Whom do we truly stand with? These days, standing with the victims, with smallholder farmers, with those who have lost their land, with Indigenous peoples’ communities is certainly harder, because the weak standing alongside the weak is difficult in itself. But if a public-interest organisation is not standing with the weak, then whom should it stand with? I believe the fundamental position of any public-interest organisation is to stand with the weak, with Mother Earth, with the interests of this planet. Yet the line has grown blurred. Companies are now talking about biodiversity, offering solutions – is this a good thing or a bad thing? Public-interest organisations need to discern: what is real and what is fake, what is mere window dressing, and what genuinely strikes at the root of the problem? But there has been far too little discussion of this discernment within the field. It should be the most open, the most candid conversation we have.

Tian Le: You just touched on the issue of greenwashing – both the real and the fake variety. In truth, there are an enormous number of false solutions out there. We often say you cannot expect to solve a problem using the very logic that created it. Foodthink has a dedicated tag for this type of approach: “false solutions”. Take Meituan, for example, which publicises that because its platform offers a “no cutlery” option, it reduces waste by a certain amount each year. But in reality, Meituan’s business volume keeps growing, and the absolute total of waste it generates is surging alongside it. Compared with that ever-growing new total, the single-use cutlery saved is negligible. Moreover, in real-world practice, even when a user selects the “no cutlery” option, merchants still include cutlery out of fear of a bad review or because they simply lack time to note the detail. This is a textbook false solution. So how should consumers and the public learn to tell the difference?

● In its 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility report, Meituan claimed that “over 400 million food-delivery users have chosen the ‘no cutlery’ option”, but in practice, many consumers report that they still receive cutlery even after selecting “no cutlery”. Image source: Meituan 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility Report
Ma Tianjie: If consumers are expected to work it out for themselves, that is virtually impossible. Even professionals sometimes struggle to untangle the truth from the fiction, to judge degree and difference – let alone ordinary people. So the role of intermediaries in the information chain – the media, public-interest organisations, information platforms – becomes critically important. Companies like ByteDance already play a central role in the flow of information. Under the governance of AI and algorithms, information dissemination has become more efficient and far larger in scale, yet also easier to manipulate. These companies’ algorithms determine what the public sees and which information shapes their views. To discern truth from falsehood and provide reliable information in this environment is enormously difficult. Tian Le: That is precisely when I feel environmental professionals and journalists need to be clearest about their mission. Journalism itself is a public-interest product. We shoulder the responsibility of safeguarding the public interest, and that means we must uphold our professionalism, our independence, and our commitment to truth, ensuring that the information we transmit is accurate and complete.

Sun Shan: It really is difficult. I know that some journalists, unable to publish complete reports in mainstream media, have turned to their own podcasts or self-published writing, doing their best to share what they know. You may not be an internet celebrity, your audience may be small, but if you hold accurate information, you should speak out as much as you can.

Tian Le: But the reality is that a great deal of what passes for media reporting has become a public-relations product. Recently we have observed that, possibly more than 70 per cent of “in-depth reporting” on food and agriculture is content bought by corporate public relations – companies paying media outlets to craft stories whose ultimate trajectory is to showcase the company’s good deeds, sculpt a positive public image and sidestep the company’s actual problems. The firewall between the editorial and advertising departments has been breached, and even serious journalists are increasingly required to take on advertorial assignments, or even to write advertorials that read like news. Of course, there are still media outlets holding the line. People magazine, for instance, used a piece of investigative journalism to lay bare, in vivid detail, the plight of delivery riders trapped inside algorithmic systems – work that profoundly shaped how both the public and policy-makers understood the issue. Not long ago, Southern Weekend also published an investigation into carbon credits, showing just how absurd the business of “selling air” really is and how much fraud pervades the carbon trading market. But reports like that have become increasingly rare.

In the first half of this podcast, our two guests and the host discussed at length the challenges public-interest organisations face when companies intervene in environmental and social issues. So how might we imagine, advocate for and build a better society? Look out for Foodthink’s next post, where the three of us will explore numerous successful cases from home and abroad. Stay tuned.
Planning: Tian Le Podcast production: Xiao Putao

Transcript preparation: Maomao

Editing: Yuyang, Tian Le

Published by Foodthink