In recent years, the competition among companies is fiercer than ever, and customers have been concerned about environmental issues, so many organizations devote themselves to attract customers via promoting green products and services. As a result, green products as well as greenwashing products, which are labeled as eco-friendly while actually they are not, have inundated the marketplace in modern society. However, some companies overstate their environmental claims so that customers have difficulty in distinguishing real eco-friendly products from greenwashing ones. This essay will show the reasons for greenwashing problems and discuss Chevron’s (one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies) marketing strategies, which hides
22) reports that the campaign “distorts the nature of the company’s environmental partnerships”. For example, the donation of SANGEA, which is a kind of system used to assist petroleum companies with estimating, managing and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is owned by American Petroleum Institute (API) and developed by ChevronTexaco, happened in the campaign was in fact “an act of collusion”. In fact, the chairman in API is ChevronTexaco’s CEO, which is rarely known by the public (Johnson 2004, p.23). The relationship between API and ChevronTexaco benefits the company because API would be on Chevron’s side without hesitation.

Chevron also contends that it has already cleaned up the oil well that it has had polluted before, which was exposed as a deceit. In 2009, Chevron was accused of an unsupported cleanup, in spite of its claiming that it had already finished the work (United Press International 2009). Besides, studies show that the company is continuing to pollute the environment (United Press International 2009). According to TerraChioce Environmental Marketing Inc (2007, p.4), that Chevron misleads the public is the “Sin of Fibbing”, which means that the company “makes environmental claims” and do not states the truth. Since Chevron’s statement did not declare the fact that it failed to clean up where it had polluted before, the company conveyed the public with false information. Therefore, Chevron commits the “Sin of