December 14, 2007 | Company news, Being Green

We wrote a post a few days ago about Green-washing. We thought it might be helpful to come completely clean about our business - for the sake of our clients, and for the sake of transparency. I’d hope that other products and services out there would do the same. So here are the 6 sins, complete with how we add up:

• Trade-offs. The example given: Paper. It may be harvested from sustainable forests but how environmentally-savvy is the production?
  • Broom Huggers is gradually taking steps to make all aspects of our business sustainable and responsible. The places where we’re lacking right now are transportation (financial prohibitions have kept us from going carbon-neutral), energy (our office uses some sustainable power, but not 100%), and marketing (while we opt for 100% recycled paper, and go paper-free as often as possible, we still advertise in print and haven’t paid the high premium for the most environmentally-responsible paper and inks).
    
• No proof. Claims are offered, but no substantiation is given or made available.
  • We aim to be as transparent as possible. If you have questions about any claims made in our marketing or on our website, we’ll be happy to respond via telephone or email. We’re the only cleaning service in Georgia certified by Co-op America. 
• Vagueness. This is a big one. Claims like chemical-free, non-toxic, and all-natural can’t be substantiated.
  • Well, we happen to use these terms all the time. Why? Because according our market research, it’s what our target clientele wants to hear. And according to their definition, it’s true - we meet their expectations there. But, we go one step further. We also tell you that we’re phosphate-free, paraben-free, and phenol-free. We’re chlorine-free and ammonia-free. Lead-free too. We’re hypo-allergenic. We don’t use disposables. Our cleaning solutions biodegrade in 28 days or less. Ask us what we mean by any of those things and we’ll tell you. There are plenty of other things that you won’t find in our products, but most of the readers here wouldn’t be interested in that list. Let me know if you want it, and I’ll get it to you. 
• Irrelevance. Companies use advertising claims that have little to no relevance to their product or target group. They count on their consumers not paying attention and not doing any research.
  • Our blog is intended to educate. We want you to know what we’re talking about, and we want you to know why it’s relevant. The truth is a tool, and we intend to use it often and wisely.
• Fibbing. Lots of companies make claims that are simply not true. Dig a little deeper than the surface, and you’ll find little fabrications.
  • Frankly, this one just makes me a little sad. You’ll never - and I mean never - catch us in an intentional fib. Nor will you catch us hiding the truth. See, our business is designed around faith-based values. Integrity is key, and not just because it’s a nice trait, but because one day we believe we’ll have to answer to the only High God and King. And fibbing just isn’t worth having to justify to the Creator of the heavens and the earth. It just seems silly. We won’t throw our faith in your face, but you can be confident that our integrity and honesty is driven by something deeper than mere warm fuzzy feelings. 
• The lesser of two evils. The example given is ‘organic’ tobacco or ‘green’ insecticides.
  • If you can find an ‘evil’ that we’re ignoring, please - by all means - bring it to our attention. I’ve put quite a bit of thought into this to figure out what this could be for us. I just can’t find anything. But that doesn’t make us perfect. Like I said, you look. Ask questions. Be an informed consumer. And if you find something, let us know so we can fix it!
    

RSS feed for comments on this post.

The URI to TrackBack this entry is:
http://broomhuggers.com/2007/12/14/broom-huggers-and-green-washing/trackback/

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website