Green Pledge Giveaways -- Does the Pledge Deliver?

There's a green giveaway format that I commonly run across.  It goes something like this:

"Take the 'Go Green Pledge' and you'll automatically be entered in a sweepstakes for a great green prize."

That's the gist of it.  Simple stuff.

And the pledge?  It's usually fairly simple, too, like promising to replace all your incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, set your washer to cold water instead of hot, place your compostables in the compost bin, etc.

To see an example of this type of green pledge drive in action, check out Jet Blue's "One Thing That's Green" promotion.  Entrants can select from one of four green pledges: unplugging their battery chargers when not in use, participating in their community's recycling program; packing a waste-free lunch (with reusable containers); and keeping tires properly inflated on their vehicle. The lucky grand prize winner, selected at random, gets a brand new Honda CR-Z Sport Hybrid.  Fun stuff.

Pledge giveaways are wonderful for promoting great, bite-sized eco-friendly actions that people can take.  Still, these types of giveaways strike me as a shade short of green.  While Jet Blue, or any other company running a pledge giveaway, can hope all it wants that entrants actually follow through on their promise, it's obviously impossible to know whether they did.  To Jet Blue's credit, it includes an option on the entry form for follow-up (i.e., "Yes, please follow up with me to see how I am making a difference.")  I assume that follow-up consists of an email reminder, not a home visit.  The latter would be the only way to truly determine whether the entrant was making good on their green pledge, but is  obviously beyond the means of any company to conduct.

Since it is impossible to discern the actual effect of a pledge giveaway, what good is it actually accomplishing?  Again, it's great for educational purposes, introducing (or reminding) folks of relatively easy-to-implement changes which has value in and of itself.  But, they're not great for touting actual achievement.  So for Jet Blue to claim, as they do on their promotional website, that "In the past two years through our One Thing That's Green pledge, 75,000 people have saved nearly 100 million gallons of water, 5 million kilowatts for electricity and more than 1 million gallons of gasoline," is a bit well, disingenuous.  But hey, if the company has evidence to back up this claim, I'm all ears.  I didn't see any on the promotion website.

There is a always a trade-off when you construct a giveaway:  the easier it is to enter, the more entrants you will get.  And a pledge entry, one which asks the entrant to simply check off a box on a web form, is incredibly easy.  But, given the lack of accountability, it has limits as a green giveaway: great for informing; lousy for actual achievement.  And it's the latter which can leave companies, even those with the best of intentions (and a neat green prize), susceptible to the charge of lots of talk and little action. 

In other words, Giveaway Greenwashing.