There is more to being clean than Greenwashing
So in a blog called GreenerTrends, we should be following…greener trends, right? Well, for better or for worse, this little article is going to be covering a decidedly un-greener trend: Green Washing.
Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re already familiar with the concept of greenwashing, but for the uninitiated, it’s basically assigning green virtues to a product that doesn’t deserve them, and that in fact is usually detrimental to the environment, for the purpose of better marketing said product.
Now obviously there is a pretty strong push for companies to greenwash their products, and in fact, the worse the product is for the environment, the stronger the impetus is. I think that regardless of your stance on the environmental movement, and the broader “green” movement, you can appreciate the pressure that is currently being put on businesses to at least appear green. It’s not hard to see that much greenwashing is the result of this pressure.
So why is greenwshing so bad? I guess if you like hurting the environment and being lied to, nothing. I suspect most of us fall into a different category however, and its ‘badness’ is mainly due to the fact that people may be buying more of a product because they think it’s better for the environment when, in fact, it’s damaging it.
Now all of this is mostly ho-hum, I know. We’re pretty used to being lied to by companies and buying things that are, shall we say, less than optimal for the environment. But greenwashing is an especially significant problem here in the states. Terrachoice, a green marketing firm, demonstrated this with its November 2007 study, “The Six Sins of Greenwashing.” In it they examined the claims made on over 1000 products and found that all but one (did you catch that, ALL BUT ONE) made claims that were either misleading, or false outright.
This, as usual, leads to the question of what actions need to be taken to stop this. As usual, other countries are seemingly ahead of the U.S. on the greenwashing issue, and we can look to them for ideas.
Canada, for instance, recently released guidelines that require companies’ environmental claims be first, “clear, specific, and accurate,” but also be verifiable. Any companies in violation of these guidelines will be prosecuted. In a bizarre, over-the-top example of environmental extremism on a national scale, Norway last year banned the use of the word “green” in car commercials, because all cars are worse for the environment than no cars.
Now all of this is not to say that the U.S. isn’t doing anything, or should be like Norway and go nuts. Right now, the Federal Trade Commission is deciding on guidelines for products that wish to tout their greenness, and there have been some guidelines in place, though rarely enforced and much too lax, since 1997.
Ultimately, whatever guidelines come out of the FTC, it’s likely that it will still fall to the consumer to find out whether a product meets his or her own green standards. Fortunately, this information is usually only a click away, and more and more now, consumers are using their buying power to show companies that green, real green, matters.
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Ahh the market will prevail!! Great post. Have you heard about any other countries implementing effective policies?