Washing off Greenwashing Accusations: The Dishonesty of “Eni Plenitude” on Live Television
By Michele Affinito | Magazine | February 19, 2022
Cover Illustration: Eni logo and closeup of man pumping gasoline fuel in car at a gas station. Sofia Righi / The Amsterdammer (Image by: Engin Akyurt / Unsplash)
Magazine reporter Michele Affinito talks about how Festival di Sanremo – the Italian equivalent to the Super Bowl in terms of media coverage and cultural significance – is used by companies to falsely advertise themselves. More specifically Eni, one of the biggest polluters in the world, who used the Festival to perform one of the biggest acts of greenwashing seen on Italian television.
Italian Super Bowl
If you love it you watch it, if you hate it you don’t, but if you’re Italian, you cannot escape the mania around Festival di Sanremo. The most popular Italian music festival is able to hypnotize a whole country: for five days, there is nothing but Sanremo. What happens in Sanremo becomes a part of history. To describe it to people outside of the country, it can be considered the Italian equivalent of the Super Bowl. Just as in the Super Bowl, it is the perfect moment for companies to come up with interesting and catchy advertisements to promote their brands and appeal to the Italian public. Marketing strategies become a serious game for those five days.
However, marketing is also insidious, and intellectual honesty is not the primary feature of many multinational companies when it comes to selling an idea that does not always coincide with reality. That is why when Eni was announced as one of the biggest sponsors of the Festival, many people expected honesty to be the big absentee of this event. However, few were ready to witness such blatant acts of greenwashing by one of the biggest polluters in the world.
The numbers do not lie
When it comes to multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in the field of fossil fuel extraction and distribution, marketing and lobbying are crucial to sell their monstrous operations as efforts to make this world a better place. With the eyes of the world set on the green transition and renewables, Eni grabbed the perfect stage to set up what may be considered the biggest act of greenwashing on Italian television. From the ‘Green Carpet’ to the ‘Plenitude’ Spotify playlist, Eni is trying everything to wash off the recent accusations of greenwashing and misleading advertisements, for which it was forced to pay €5 million. This sum is just peanuts compared to the €44 billion of the company’s profits in 2020. What better strategy than to poison Italians’ minds with even more greenwashing?
To give weight to environmentalists’ accusations towards Eni, a few figures may suffice. “Eni becomes Plenitude”, reads the company website. However, as stated by ‘The Big Con’, a 2021 report by corporate accountability, Eni’s plan for a green transition is simply a cover-up to save its face while continuing to extract and pollute: no ‘green’ strategy is in place, while the company still plans to increase its oil and gas production by 2025. In its 2018-2021 business plan, ENI invested €1.2 billion in the green transition, only 4% of its investment budget. Green transition on paper, business as usual in reality, greenwashing to sustain the fantasy.
Interests of the planet above profits? Maybe one day…
If the fantasy is advertised to 13 million Italian viewers, it becomes a reality that no debunker will ever be able to oppose. Italians should ask themselves: during a festival that is supposed to celebrate the Italian musical tradition, the Italian excellence that inspired the Eurovision Song Contest, should there really be space to applaud and give voice to a company whose only interest is to use this influential platform to tell a vicious lie of pretend sustainable responsibility? We, as consumers, deserve to have a public broadcaster that puts our interests above profits.
The problem with greenwashing is that it is a fight on unequal terms against science that puts the consumer at the center of the problem. The solution to the climate crisis is in the palm of our hands: we just need to be more conscious, and MNCs are there to lend a helping hand. If they are doing something about it, how can we complain? The climate, however, does not care that a family in Milan decides to switch to Eni Plenitude, if that same company continues to extract millions of liters of oil every day in the African continent. This comforting narrative of a green transition (nobody knows when it will happen, but it will happen) is like icing on a rotten cake, an effort to hide a reality that companies do not want to face and that they definitely do not want to change. A reality that does not worry CEOs and shareholders, who will continue to fill their wallets, one green advertisement after another.
Michele Affinito is a student at the University of Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
