Over the last several years new, we've been encouraged by the emergence of more responsible companies and the restructuring of older companies to reduce their impact on the environment. Unfortunately, along with the good there are also plenty of companies that falsely market their products as green. Learning how to distinguish the green from the greenwash isn't always easy, but these nine points are a good place to start!
Tristan Roberts from GreenBuildingAdvisor.com tackled the subject (mostly as it applies to building materials) and identified these nine tactics that companies use:
1. Green By Association: When a company associates itself with environmental terms and images even if its products have no environmental benefits, with the intent that consumers associate them with positive environmental attributes.
2. Lack of Definition: When a product makes an environmental claim that sounds good to the consumer but is too vague or general.
3. Unproven Claims: When a company makes environmental claims, but cannot or will not provide evidence to back them up.
4. The Non Sequitur: When a company uses a valid claim about a product as the basis for a further claim that is not warranted, but may on its surface appear to be reasonable (in other words, confusing the consumer).
5. Forgetting the Lifecycle: When a company chooses one easily understood aspect of a product's environmental profile to improve and highlight, while ignoring other significant impacts — sometimes out of ignorance; sometimes as an intentional effort to divert attention.
6. Bait and Switch: When a company heavily promotes the environmental attributes of a single product, while selling and manufacturing a bulk of otherwise similar products that lack the same environmental attributes.
7. Rallying Behind a Lower Standard: When a product earns an apparently valid, third-party certification — but the product's manufacturer or trade association had influenced the development of the relevant standard in a way that makes the certification less meaningful than it appears.
8. Reluctant Enthusiast: When a company lobbies against new environmental measures, claiming that they will be too costly. Particularly if it's losing the battle however, it hedges its bets, publicly embracing similar measures — while continuing to resist them behind the scenes.
9. Outright Lying: When, either intentionally or inadvertently, a company bends the truth, or simply ignores it.
Read More: Check out the full article at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com
(Image: TerraChoice)
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The guy at Green Biz said it best: green marketing is so over. Let's move on. If a company wants to label its product's effects on ecological systems, they need to hire an ecologist. Are we really going to believe that some dude with a bachelor's degree in business can understand soil and wildlife ecology? Any label that's first or second party and NOT confirmed by a biologist, is a scam.
These are great, but I'd like to see some specific examples to really know what to look out for. Not being a biologist/ecologist myself, what specifically should I look for to know that I'm not being taken in by the marketing? How should an average consumer be able to know when they are being lied to or deliberately misled by packaging and marketing?
Just clicked the link to the full article and realized that there *are* some examples there... I should click before I comment.
I still think it's difficult to see through the marketing without spending more time than I'm willing to researching every product I buy.
MsTiggy, I hope the AT folks don't mind if I answer your question (a good one - I wish more people would ask it!) First off, go from a position of strength. Start to use products that you know for sure are eco-friendly. Even a Biologist would not know if household cleaning products are okay, because they don't list the ingredients!! Right away, it's dishonest. Never read the front of the package - it's an advertistment. Only read the contents or the ingredients. What you want is information.
I started a "one eco-pledge per month" for myself. It worked well because I did not feel overwhelmed. One month I wanted to "green" my coffee habits, so I researched shade-grown coffee and took a whole month to switch. That gave me the leisure time to understand the
ps And if it's not third party certified, it's crap. Even third party certificaions can be bunk. You can always Google the product name along with "greenwashing" and you'll usually get someone giving the lowdown on the product somewhere. Then you can try to go to a .edu site for ecological information or even contact me on my website, I write about this stuff all the time.
http://emmiscafe.wordpress.com/
Here's one.
When in description or discussion of said item, all they can say about it is how eco this or green that it is. Emphasizing the environmental qualities far and above any others.
The buzz words of the movement have been used to such a sickening extent, that the mere implication of those qualities turn me off and I walk away.