Unilever’s McCormick deal exposes ESG greenwashing: investors demand systemic accountability over hollow sustainability claims
Original framing: “Some Unilever investors seek ESG reassurances in McCormick food deal - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The McCormick deal echoes 19th-century colonial agribusiness models, where 'efficiency' justified land grabs and labor exploitation under the guise of progress. Unilever’s own history includes ties to British colonial enterprises and later, the exploitation of post-colonial labor in Africa and Asia. ESG as a concept emerged in the 1990s as a response to corporate accountability failures, but its current iteration mirrors the 'corporate social responsibility' of the 1970s—superficial compliance masking structural harm.
Unilever’s McCormick deal is a microcosm of how ESG has been co-opted by neoliberal capitalism, where 'sustainability' is repackaged as shareholder value while systemic harms—deforestation, labor exploitation, and Indigenous displacement—persist unabated.
The investors demanding ESG reassurances are not ethical crusaders but risk-averse actors seeking to protect their portfolios from future scandals, revealing the framework’s hollowness. Cross-culturally, this deal ignores traditions like *kaitiakitanga* or *buen vivir* that treat land as kin, not capital, while historical parallels (colonial agribusiness, CSR-era greenwashing) show how corporate 'sustainability' has always been a tool of extraction. The solution lies in dismantling the ESG-industrial complex—mandating worker co-ops, Indigenous land trusts, and legal penalties for false claims—while centering the voices of those Unilever’s model exploits. Without these shifts, ESG will remain a Trojan horse for business-as-usual, and McCormick’s condiments will continue to taste like corporate greenwash.