Environmental activists have disrupted the Reuters Sustainability Awards ceremony in central London – stacked with big polluters. They aptly branded the event “The Greenwashing Awards” as the likes of corporate climate crisis criminals such as carbon mega-emitter Drax sidled up as finalists.
Reuters Sustainability Awards packed with big polluters
On Tuesday 1 October, corporate media outlet Reuters hosted its annual Sustainability Awards event in London.
Its website describes the affair as:
the world’s leading Awards that celebrate leadership in sustainable business.
However, over 100 companies with chequered environmental and human rights records were among the finalists. These included:
- Selby based Biofuel giant Drax, who are the UKs biggest carbon emitter. In May energy regulator Ofgem slapped it with £25m in fines over misreporting in its supply chains. The wood pellet-burning power station has sourced from companies razing high-risk and old growth ancient forests, primarily in the US, Canada, and the Baltic States.
- Holcim Ltd, whose subsidiary paid Isis millions during Syria’s civil war to keep its concrete factories open.
- Aris Mining, who are suing the country of Colombia because of community unionsation
- Fortescue, the Australian mining giant who the Indigenous Yindjibarndi peoples are suing for mining on Aboriginal land, and recently welcomed the disastrous former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as an advisor.
Other nominees include Amazon, Mars, and the tobacco giant Philip Morris International.
Virgin Atlantic was also among the nominations for an award for its ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel’ project. However, this is a slick industry greenwashing con – in part because SAF technology isn’t remotely scalable to current aviation levels.
Moreover, Virgin Atlantic’s SAF is a case and point of where SAFs are already causing environmental destruction. In particular, an investigation by openDemocracy found that the company has sourced vast amounts of supposed used cooking oil from Asia – where it has identified evidence of suppliers passing off deforestation-linked virgin palm oil as this.
Corporate climate criminals getting together to pat each other on the back
In reality then, the awards have little to do with genuine sustainability and tackling the climate crisis. Instead, it’s a prime opportunity for environment-wrecking companies to greenwash their reputations.
Tellingly, the Reuters Sustainability Awards website goes on to say:
The Awards ceremony is not only a great night to recognise the hard work and the amazing achievement of being a finalist and finding out the result of the awards, but it also offers the chance to enhance business networks which lead to valuable collaborations and connections.
In other words, it provides the perfect chance for big polluters to rub shoulders, under a smokescreen of celebrating sustainability.
Notably, companies paid Reuters £500-1000 to enter into the awards, and then a further minimum of £8000 to attend the event itself.
What’s more, these climate-wrecking companies may as well have been marking their own homework – and practically were. This is because news site Reuters is a paid shill in the pocket of fossil fuel firms.
Specifically, investigative outlet Desmog hightlighted in 2023 that Reuters’s in-house ad agency tops the table of corporate media outlets in its marketing for big oil and gas. In particular, it noted that out of multiple corporate media outlets:
only one company, Reuters, offers fossil-fuel advertisers every possible avenue to reach its audience, including custom events.
Essentially, it offers the full sweep of sponsored commercial partnership content to fossil fuel clients. It’s therefore perhaps little wonder its so-called sustainability awards was stuffed with these companies too.
‘Welcome to the Greenwashing Awards’
Given all this, activists crashed the event to call out the staggering hypocrisy of Reuters laundering the bogus sustainability credentials of these notorious companies.
Protesters from Axe Drax and Climate Resistance unfurled an enormous banner above the entrance to the central London venue. In big bold green print, this read:
Welcome To The Greenwashing Awards
They handed out ‘Certificates of Greenwashing’ to participants, which listed some of the abuses on the back:
Unsurprisingly, the action drew a heavy police presence:
However, activists at the award ceremony were undeterred, staging a sit-in demonstration in the foyer to the awards:
Axe Drax’s Polly Hallam said of the Reuters Sustainability Awards:
What we are seeing here is an example of the very same multinationals who are guilty of perpetuating the climate crisis pretending to have green credentials to distract us from their environmental and human rights abuses. They pay money to get a badge for press releases and websites in order to launder their reputation. These awards distract us from the real work needed to rapidly decarbonise and get on track to solving the catastrophe that continues to unfold.
Echoing this, Climate Resistance activist Sam Simons said that:
Big polluters are using their political influence to stonewall climate action and protect their own short-term profits. Drax, the UK’s single largest carbon emitter, donated £12,000 to Labour and sponsored their party conference, in order buy influence and protect their dirty business. We face a climate crisis – only last month, huge swathes of Europe were underwater. Yet these companies are more focused on laundering their reputations rather than stopping the actual harmful practices that are contributing to the problem.
Feature and in-text images via Axe Drax
