Greenwashing: uma revisão sistemática sobre a produção intelectual do tema na área da engenharia

Abstract

Sustainable development is becoming an increasingly relevant topic, therefore, the most varied organizations have sought environmental adaptations to legal demands and those of their consumers, an example of this is the existence of "green products", which promise to simultaneously satisfy the needs of their customers. buyers, and generate smaller impacts on the environment. However, greenwashing emerges in this scenario, an activity that seeks to deceive consumers regarding a company's environmental practices or the environmental benefits of a product or service. Through a systematic review with textual analysis and scientometric data from scientific works, this study sought to understand whether and how the phenomenon of greenwashing has been addressed in the area of engineering. Twenty-six periodicals were found in English and two in Portuguese that contained the search expressions described in the methodology section. The research carried out in these periodicals resulted in thirty scientific works using the term greenwashing, and from these nine scientific works were selected, which fit the theme of this work, which were concentrated in four periodicals. It was also observed that no work with the term greenwashing was found in Portuguese. Furthermore, it was possible to observe that there is an increasing trend in publications on the topic in recent years (from 2020 onwards). From the nine selected works, four categories of analysis emerged: Greenwashing practice in the dissemination of environmental information; Establishment of legal standards to control greenwashing practices; Greenwashing as a tactic to gain financial and social capital and Greenwashing, consumer perception and purchasing behavior of green products, which were discussed throughout the text. Thus, it was verified that, although incipiently, the topic has been addressed in English-language scientific literature, but that the same does not occur in national scientific production.