History Main / GreenwashedVillainy

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLorax'': At one point, The Once-ler advertises his Thneeds as "Lorax Approved!", In a parody of real life efforts to greenwash by getting pro environmental messaging on unethical products.

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/DirkPittAdventures'': In ''Sahara'', an amoral tycoon has built a state-of-the-art facility for disposing environmental waste in the Sahara Desert, far from any significant human habitation. But the "waste disposal facility" is really only for show -- while some waste is being destroyed as advertised, the most dangerous waste is stored underground in ''very'' unsafe ways, leading to massive contamination of nearby groundwater supplies and oceanic pollution that quite threatens the entire biosphere.
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* ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'': "One Man's Treasure" has Lance Carlberg, the chairman of New York Recycle. Carlberg claims to have found a method to recycle batteries safely, but in truth, his company simply switches the labels containing the battery sludge and dumps them in the sea. [[VictimOfTheWeek Sam Parker]] had discovered this while committing corporate espionage and was killed by Carlberg to silence him. The police are able to nail Carlberg when they find the gun he used to kill Sam in the dumpster outside of his apartment building. Castle jokes that Carlberg would have gotten away with it if he recycled.

* ''VideoGame/SpiderManMilesMorales'': Simon Krieger is the [=CEO=] of Roxxon Corporation's R&D Department. His aim is to have New York City's Harlem District powered by Nuform, an alternative fuel source he insists is completely safe. [[spoiler:It isn't: anyone exposed around Nuform for an extended period of time becomes sick, as Rick Mason, the former head of the Nuform project, discovered when he became sick himself. Despite this, Simon decides to go forward with using Nuform because he feels he's sunk too much money into the project to scrap it and kills Rick to hide the truth. This leads to Rick's little sister, Phin, becoming the Tinkerer and joining the Underground with the goal of exposing Simon's corruption.]]

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': "One Man's Treasure" has Lance Carlberg, the chairman of New York Recycle. Carlberg claims to have found a method to recycle batteries safely, but in truth, his company simply switches the labels containing the battery sludge and dumps them in the sea. [[VictimOfTheWeek Sam Parker]] had discovered this while committing corporate espionage and was killed by Carlberg to silence him. The police are able to nail Carlberg when they find the gun he used to kill Sam in the dumpster outside of his apartment building. Castle jokes that Carlberg would have gotten away with it if he recycled.

SubTrope of WeCare, and related to VillainousGentrification. Contrast with EcoTerrorist who is trying to save the environment, just with dangerous methods.

This is when a specific type of VillainWithGoodPublicity co-opts environmentalism to sanitize their image, all while covering up actions that are harmful to the environment.

* ''Film/GlassOnion'': [[spoiler:Claire Debella is the governor of Connecticut and is running for Senator on progressive, ecofriendly platform. Her campaign is endorsed by Miles Bron, a CEO who is pushing a new fuel source called Klear. Even after learning that Klear is incredibly dangerous and unstable, with the potential to destroy houses and that Miles has killed two people in part to keep this secret, Clair is still reluctant to turn against him until Miles's house and the Mona Lisa are destroyed due to a Klear explosion and it becomes impossible to hide the danger it presents.]]
* ''Film/LegallyBlonde 2'': Congresswoman Victoria Rudd is introduced as Elle's BenevolentBoss and her strongest ally in passing Bruiser's Bill, a piece of legislation that will outlaw animal testing. [[spoiler:It's revealed that Rudd's image as an animal lover is a lie and she has been secretly working against Bruiser's Bill to help her sponsors who are in favor of animal testing.]]

* In the ''Literature/JuniperSawfeather'' trilogy, Affron Oil pretends to care about the environment. They have an ad campaign where they brag about saving the environment one gas station at a time. But despite the billions of dollars they make every year, they refuse to spend one penny on anything that would actually protect the environment, like retrofitting their oil tankers to comply with new regulations about the thickness of the hulls. As a result, their leaky ships pollute beaches along the entire west coast. They're responsible for the oil spill that kills two mermaids at the beginning of the first book, and in fact turn out to be upholding the {{masquerade}} because if people find out there's sentient life in the ocean, they won't be able to get away with polluting it.

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': "One Man's Treasure" has Lance Carlberg, the chairman of New York Recycle. Carlberg claims to have found a method to recycle batteries safely, but in truth, his company simply switches the labels containing the battery sludge and dumps them in the sea. [[VictimOfTheWeek Sam Parker]] had discovered this while committing corporate espionage and was killed by Carlberg to silence him. The police are able to nail Carlberg when they find the gun he used to kill Sam in the dumpster outside of his apartment building, prompting a joke from Castle that Carlberg would have gotten away with it if he recycled.

** "The Great Train Job": Blake Whitcomb, a green energy innovator who has been in the news for his intentions to create a plane that runs entirely on electric energy. However, the Leverage team discovers that Whitcomb has been carelessly and illegally disposing of the batteries for his electric cars, resulting in a couple of farmers becoming sick and their crops dying. Whitcomb is also willing to hire Neo-Nazis to intimidate the victims of his crimes into staying silent.
** "The Muddy Waters Job": [=GulfPetrol=], an oil company that had recently gotten into trouble due to oil spills. Their new CEO Ethan Bradford was brought in to take care of any leaks and received great praise for pushing the company in a green energy direction. However, it is ultimately revealed that this is all just media spin; Gulf Petrol's new oil platform ''Hyperion'' has been leaking after being damaged by a mudslide and Gulf Petrol will do anything to cover it up, even going as far as [[spoiler:destroying their own oil rig to hide evidence of the leaks, killing their own employees in the process]].

[[folder: Fan Works]]

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/TheSimpsonsGame https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/auntie_nature.png]]]]

* ''WesternAnimation/Cars2'': Sir Miles Axelrod, head of Axelrod Industries, claims to be electric-run and pushes the alternate fuel Allinol as an environmentally friendly product. In reality, [[spoiler: Axelrod is the Kingpin behind the Lemons' operations, and wants to discredit alternative fuels so that they can go on selling oil from the oil fields they own.]]

** In "Raise the Steaks," Megalo-Mart sells supposedly "organic" steaks, but a clerk admits to Hank that it's just factory farm steaks with a different label. Hank does find genuinely good organic food at a co-op, but the Megalo Mart buys that and tries to market its crappy steaks as natural.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': In [[Recap/FuturamaS4E2LeelasHomeworld "Leela's Homeworld"]], Bender opens an industrial waste disposal business. It dumps the toxic waste into New New York's sewer system, annoying the mutants who live down there.