December 12, 2007 | Being Green, Lifestyle, News
TerraChoice, an environmental marketing firm, has keyed us in to a new trend in the marketplace. They call it “Green-washing,” which by their definition is “the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.” They deliver to us the 6 sins of green-washing, which are frighteningly prevalent.
Without regurgitating their list (you can read it here), I will point out that some of the big points are unsubstantiated claims and blanket, meaningless terms. Certain products cannot be certified organic (most meat, many cleaning supplies, etc.). But that doesn’t stop companies from calling their products or services organic. Another big one is “all-natural.” My high school English teacher would put that in the same category as the word “good” - totally meaningless in that it’s too subjective, overly broad, and not verifiable. In fact, even cocaine is natural, but that doesn’t make it healthy.
The fact of the matter is, the ‘green’ market has been flooded by people jumping on the band-wagon, but unfortunately the vast majority of companies, products, and services out there are only giving it lip-service. John Makower wrote a great post about TerraChoice’s Six Sins of Greenwashing, and I encourage you to check out what he has to say about it.
If you, as a consumer, are going to spend the extra energy and money to come over to the greener side, you owe it to yourself to be informed about the market.
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Jeana says:
Thanks for this info! I’ve heard lots of rhumors about people saying they are organic but not actually being organic. I haven’t gotten all of the way through the site yet to see if they mention specific names but I think Similac was a big one on just slapping an “organic” lable on the regular stuff. I know that when it comes to natural and organic products I try to stick with companies that only do natural products like Back to Nature, Kashi and so on. If a company will make a product full of junk we don’t need and then an “organic” version I don’t even bother. If they were really concerned about our health all of their products would be natural/organic.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:23 pm