Canada's Greenest Employers (2025) - Flipbook - Page 15
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CANADA'S GREENEST EMPLOYERS (2025) SPONSOR CONTENT
Ensuring sustainability claims by employers are accurate and verifiable is a key part of the editorial review for the Canada’s Greenest Employers competition.
Genuinely green
Focusing on practical, concrete and verifiable eco-initiatives distinguishes Canada’s Greenest Employers
A
t Oakville, Ont. -based Siemens
Canada Limited, one of
Canada’s Greenest Employers
(2025), head of sustainability
Natalia Malafeeva is proud that her
company is committed to truly reducing
greenhouse gas emissions in the
atmosphere. The global firm has long
realized that physical removal is far
superior to such methods as carbon
offsets, where organizations that have
reduced emissions through particular
projects can sell to other organizations the
right to offset a certain amount. “That can
be a very, very ambiguous area, and
sometimes companies are being blamed
for engaging in greenwashing,” she says.
“Because it’s very difficult to track where
those emissions were actually reduced and
where they’re offsetting.”
Malafeeva notes that there are more
regulated carbon marketplaces than the
voluntary system widely used for offsets.
But more broadly, questions about how
the public can trust the claims a company
makes about its sustainability actions have
grown in recent years. Environmentalists
have charged that some companies paint
themselves as sustainability paragons on
the basis of false or misleading statements
in ads and marketing, known as
“greenwashing.” In response to concerns
that consumers and businesses would not
be able to discern the truth, the Canadian
government last year brought in new
legislation, part of the Competition Act,
requiring companies to directly
substantiate claims they make about their
environmental activities. Greenwashing,
says the federal Competition Bureau,
“harms competition because it misleads
consumers into believing they are making
environmentally friendly choices when
they aren’t.”
The editors of Canada’s Greenest
Employers (2025) are well aware of such
concerns and are at pains to ensure their
research for the competition is
unassailable. “When we review the
applications, we’re looking for initiatives
that are tangible and concrete,” says Sonja
Verpoort, assistant editor at Mediacorp
Canada, which runs the competition.
“We’re interested in initiatives both big
and small, but we absolutely want to see
the evidence of those ideas and policies
being put into practice by the employer.”
In other words, if they’re not truly green,
they’re ‘washed’ out of the competition.
– Berton Woodward
