Is the “Green Washing” Effect Stronger than Real Scientific Knowledge? Are We Able to Transmit Formal Knowledge in the Face of Marketing Campaigns?

Abstract

Nowadays, the majority of citizens are subjected to a great deal of (dis)information organized by marketing campaigns or by groups with political interests that indiscriminately abuse concepts such as sustainability, either bio or organic. One of the objectives of formal education in any developed country should be to transmit enough formal (scientific) knowledge about processes and products (related to chemistry, biology, economics, and mathematics) so that citizens can adequately reflect on what is really sustainable and what is not, and also to be able to evaluate the environmental impact of any process. In the first part of this work, we describe the results of a survey that has been carried out in order to assess whether citizens make decisions based on marketing campaigns or based on formal knowledge. It is analyzed if those that have followed STEM studies differ from the rest. In the second part, we propose an activity to be done, in a multidisciplinary approach, by students from both fine arts and engineering, with the objective of consolidating and putting into practice the formal knowledge they have acquired to adequately evaluate the sustainability of a process.