"The House has Already Burned Down" - A Research Study Exploring Greenwashing in the Swedish Legal Practice

Abstract: As the interest in greenwashing as a strategy for marketing increases, monitoring institutions in Sweden have not failed to acknowledge the tendency of unwarranted and exaggerated statements that has left the impression of products or services without any legitimate support. Even as institutions have voiced their active engagement in tackling this problem, critique has been raised arguing that greenwashing is only increasing with little resistance to deter its practice. While institutions operate to control and combat greenwashing, there is a general lack of research of the concept itself, but also in terms of addressing the relationship between the ambition behind the law prohibiting greenwashing and the experience of the law in the practice. Moreover, this thesis aims to examine the legal awareness, or socio-legal realities, as identified by relevant actors concerning the current strategies prohibiting and enforcing the prohibition of greenwashing in Sweden. The aim is to identify what strategies are currently put into practice to combat greenwashing, what obstacles can be identified to explain the present situation of sub-optimality, and address the potential approaches that can be suggested for further improvement when enforcing the law to deter future crime. While drawing on the theoretical concept of legal consciousness, this research derives from a qualitative approach where it in combination with a literature review will study these socio-legal realities in the form of interviews. The research findings show that there is no issue in referring to the legal norms that reflect a strong rule of law. Moreover, these individuals describe the law as well-formulated and angles the issue toward the application of the law, rather than the actual norms. The political diversity between the informants becomes evident in the second research question where there are different ambitions to tackle greenwashing and recognise its seriousness and urgency. The public interest in greenwashing has not been identified as a prioritised issue and has been experienced to have little room in the political as well as in the legal discourse. The diverse interest in identifying active obstacles to greenwashing has also been reflected in the identification of potential approaches for improvement and further development. While some informants argue that the field will develop in its own time, other informants call for action on both institutional and collective level. Here, concerns call for a need of stronger sanctions, clearer directives, and a collective legitimacy of the phenomenon to establish a legal consciousness that recognises the seriousness, urgency and consequences of deceptive environmental marketing.