Marshalls landscaping has gone on the offensive and accused competitors of 'greenwashing' the landscaping industry saying that whilst there is a tendency by its competitors to talk about the environment, climate change, ethics and carbon footprint, their actions on the other hand, are exactly the opposite.
Marshalls has labelled this greenwashing as environmental window dressing and says that more energy is spent on slick PR campaigning rather than actually doing anything to protect the environment.
Whilst taking a big swipe at competitors, Marshalls says that it is actually the one doing all of the work on a "journey of sustainability by delivering measurable environmental benefits."
Monitoring of its operations it says, has been going on since 2002 by utilising "the Construction Products Association (CPA) KPIs to measure the impacts year on year in terms of its energy and water usage, transport, waste reduction and packaging."
Marshalls understands and knowledges that it is contributing to man-made climate change as identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but it had already commissioned its own research on how to lessen the effect on the environment.
It claims that this independent research has verified that Co2 emissions from its manufacturing processes was reduced by 39%.
In 2007, Marshalls were awarded the first ever Biodiversity Benchmark by the The Wildlife Trust for land management and contribution to the environment.
Marshalls also says it is passionate about the ethical sourcing and supply of Indian sandstone and it was the first company to join the Ethical Trading Initiative and subsequently adopting the ETI Base Code which insists that child labour should not be used and work should only be carried out by willing participants and workers should be paid a decent wage.
I commend any moves towards an ethical approach to any business operations but I cannot help feeling that Marshalls is trying to influence buyers by its inference that other Indian stone suppliers do not care about the ethical side of the business.
In March 2008, Marshalls announced in its results that it had purchased £7.7 million of imported natural stone and it conceded that inventories remained high. The plan was to reduce these inventories through 2008/09 but in my experience, when a business is overstocked, it will have no choice to sell off at close to or below cost.
I asked Marshalls yesterday if the release of their Greenwash statement might be seen as an attempt to shift this stock-pile of stone.
Marshalls have so far not responded.
I would be more than happy to work with Marshalls and any other 'ethical' supplier in highlighting the shortfalls of the industry and publicising any policies of change. Let us hope, that the industry refrains from a slanging match on the subject and remains focussed.
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