Now that it's getting easier to be green (with apologies to Kermit), it seems like everybody and their brother is touting their environmental cred. But what is true and what is mere marketing?
This, my friends, is where greenwashing-radar comes in handy. Greenwashing is the act of misleading consumers by inflating or skewing the environmental benefits of a product or the environmental practices of a corporation. A perfect example is the Clear Sky Act of 2003, which actually loosened pollution regulations for many companies, yet its name sounds pretty.
There are six sins of greenwashing -- here they are:
- Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off: A company that achieves a gain in sustainability in exchange for a loss. But they only talk about the gain. For instance, an auto manufacturer that touts its hybrid vehicles but its fleet actually decreases the overall average miles-per-gallon because they added a bunch of huge trucks to their lineup.
Another example is a green home built on a cornfield in the middle of nowhere, with no access to transit. It's great and all that you used bamboo flooring and Energy Star appliances, but your house just added significantly to the carbon load. Ditto to companies who build minimumally LEED certifified headquarters 20 miles outside of town then surround it with a mega-parking lot.
Or throwing out your gas-guzzling mower for a smarter electric one. Feeling good about yourself? You just generated more waste, smart guy.
- Sin of No Proof: How about soaps that claim to be certified organic, but offer no verifiable certification -- super common.
- Sin of Vagueness: This one is annoying -- products that boast they're 100% natural when that alone is not inherently good. There are tons of naturally-occurring substances that are hazardous, like mercury and formaldehyde.
- Sin of Irrelevance: this is when a product claims a feat, such as being CFC-free, twhich is no big deal -- CFCs were banned 20 years ago.
- Sin of Fibbing: products falsely claiming to be EcoLogo, Green Seal or another recognized environmental standard. This is rare -- probably because it is easily disproven.
- Sin of Lesser of Two Evils: sorry hipsters, this is pretty much reserved for American Spirit organic cigarettes. Still bad...
One of the worst parts of greenwashing is that it contributes to environmental fatigue: that sense of ennui that one person's choices can change nothing.
So sharpen your greenwashing radar and fight that weariness. A cool website where you can share your pain is the
Greenwashing Index. You can post ads or pictures and rate egregious acts of greenwashing or, conversely, how awesomely green a particular product or company is.
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh
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