Hannah Ernst

Is green hushing the new — and harder to detect — greenwashing? What exactly does green hushing mean? How can we detect it? And what can we do about it?

Please go ahead and imagine something with me. We, you and me, are parents to two siblings. When they’ve done something wrong, the older one will just lie straight into your face and invent an entirely new narrative. We as parents can probably detect it rather quickly and scold the older sibling. The younger one, however, will just leave out important details to avoid negative consequences. And maybe we won’t even notice the younger sibling’s fault and leave out consequences altogether.

Of course, the parents in this thought play act as the public, the older sibling is greenwashing and the younger sibling personifies green hushing, sometimes also spelled as one word: greenhushing.