car + greenwash = carwash?

Ford Escape Hybrid Brochure greenwash
(click on the image for larger versions)

Ford Canada really have excelled themselves with the Escape Hybrid. It’s a great big huge SUV, but that doesn’t matter because it’s one of those lovely clean hybrids. Yes, that’s right, you can feel good about driving it, because you’re only supporting repressive regimes a bit.

But the best bit is in the writeup (emphasis mine):

Giving back to the environment doesn’t just stop at printing this advertisement on recyclable paper. …

C’mon guys, it’s just a regular car glossy. All paper is recyclable. If you’d have printed it on recycled hemp paper using vegetable inks, maybe, just maybe, you’d be giving something back. But this is just a sop to the car-besotted consumer.

As they go on to say: We keep thinking about the environment. There’s a huge gap between just thinking, and actually doing something useful.