Cele sapte pacate ale greenwashing-ului

This editorial tackles a problem the Romanian forestry journals have\udnever dealt with: the greenwashing phenomenon. After a brief excursion into the\udcommunication clichés consciously or unconsciously delivered by the media to\udthe public, we have scrutinized the seven sins of greenwashing, found into the\udforestry sector or promoted by the public authority responsible for environmental\udprotection. The first sin we have found refers to the hidden trade-offs and the best\udexample in this respect is the stumpage price. Being too high, neither the forest\udadministrator/owner nor the contractor pays attention to the quality of the harvesting\udprocess, compromising the natural regeneration, destroying the upper soil\udand triggering erosion processes. Lack of evidence about the misbehavior of forest\udinspectors or unsubstantiated allegation when it comes to the ones responsible\udwith forest regime supervision is the second sin, followed by the sin of vagueness.\udThe best example of vague statement is the concept of favorable conservation\udstatus, barely defined for species but hard to define for large habitats. The sin of\udworship false labels goes along with the forest management planning system still\udstuck to the sustained yield principle even for very small forest ownerships, unable\udto produce steady annual yields simply because a regular age structure cannot\udbe ever reached. The sin of irrelevance was exemplified by the paper waste that\udfollows each public awareness campaign based on colorful flyers, personalized\udplastic ballpoint pens, folders and so on. Compared to the environmental cost\udof having this paper recycled the social benefit of having used this paper-based\udmaterial fades out. The sin of lesser of two evils pops up whenever the public\udauthority fails to enforce the best available technology, which sometime comes\udabout with a higher social cost or less fringe benefits for all people working in forestry.\udAfter the collapse of the communist regime, Romanian logging companies\udhad given up for good to use cable-cranes; instead they are still using heavy tractors\udeven on steep terrain. The sin of fibbing is the last and the most serious one,\udillustrated by the big national scam of obsolete car buy-back system, financed by\udthe national fund for environment. According to this scam the vouchers issued\udfor the old cars are bought by national fund for environment but the VAT for the\udnew car goes to the central budget. As the VAT is always greater than the voucher\udpayed for the old car the State gest an income at the expense of the national fund\udfor environment