New Nonprofit Goes After Green Globes for Greenwash

Greenwash Action is in a campaign to defend LEED against what it is calling industry attacks.

Greenwash Action, a joint initiative of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, is gearing up to defend LEED and campaign for changes to Green Globes—the green building rating system that the organization claims has been complicit in a greenwashing scheme.

On its crowdfunding page, Greenwash Action, whose executive director, Jason Grant, has been a prominent advocate for the Forest Stewardship Council, describes its mission as “calling on the chemical, plastics, and timber industry to cease their attacks on LEED and to tell the truth about Green Globes,” referring to recent political attempts to ban LEED in government construction and to the alternate rating system that was developed by those industries to rival LEED. The website calls for Green Globes to be either strengthened or repositioned as an entry-level green building standard.

Greenwash Action promises to “defend programs that represent true environmental leadership and challenge special interests that use greenwash to confuse the marketplace” by mobilizing individuals and intervening in policy battles.

Greenwash Action is a project of the Earth Island Institute, a nonprofit incubator for environmental start-up projects.