Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 4,19 Nov 2021,28 mins

The Emperor's New Clothes

Green Inc

Available for over a year

Cop26 has been and gone. The usually imperturbable IPCC’s latest report can best be translated as ‘Panic!’ and our Facebook feeds and Twitter timelines are littered daily with biblical scenes of infernos and flooding. But at least corporations are taking the crisis seriously... if you believe their advertising that is. BAFTA winning activist and satirist Heydon Prowse gives us his personal take as he unpacks the multi-billion-dollar PR and advertising industry that’s helping businesses across tech, energy, food and farming appear climate friendly. With increasing consumer demand for more sustainable stuff, companies are today falling over themselves to meet increased consumer demand for more sustainable products. Are we seeing the world’s largest companies shift in a more sustainable direction or is all this slick advertising just lulling us into a false sense of security? In the last in the series Heydon finds out what 'sustainability' really means in the fashion industry when allegations of greenwashing abound. Producer Neil McCarthy

Programme Website
More episodes