11th February, 2022: Social Democrats TD for Wicklow, Jennifer Whitmore tweeted an image from an AppleGreen forecourt, which purported to have carbon neutral diesel for customers. This is part of a campaign to promote carbon neutrality within the AppleGreen brand, which is advertised in their forecourts, including on the pump handles for fossil fuels.
The Irish EV Owners Association sees greenwashing with brands regularly, and will always seek to denounce it and call out hypocrisy or illegitimate claims. This instance, given it is on a diesel pump, is egregious.
IEVOA, on behalf of our members and EV drivers across the island, would like to offer AppleGreen the opportunity to:
- Explain this error
- Renege on this egregious claim
- Provide a roadmap for how they will achieve carbon neutrality with electric vehicle adoption as a core strategy, in-line with government aims in the next 8 years in Ireland
AppleGreen operates 193 forecourts across Ireland. They have a future fuels division, which employees a small number of folks in their business. They have committed to a net-zero policy by 2030, and have a public-facing “drive change” initiative with sustainability as a core pillar of operations. However, they offer limited EV charging facilities themselves, either directly branded as AppleGreen or through third-parties (e.g. eCars, EasyGo, etc.).
IrishEVs has previously called AppleGreen out on using carbon offsetting as a form of greenwashing, a sentiment IEVOA agrees with.
On behalf of the Irish EV Owners Association, once again, we would like to offer AppleGreen an opportunity to renege on this poor implementation of greenwashing and provide a clear roadmap to offering better services to current and future EV drivers that can actually achieve carbon neutrality in a sustainable manner, at scale.