Green Washing: Do You Know What You're Buying?

[depakid]

In a United States where climate change legislation, concerns about foreign oil dependence, and mandatory curbside recycling are becoming the “new normal,” companies across a variety of sectors are seeing the benefit of promoting their “greenness” in advertisements. Many lay vague and dubious claims to environmental stewardship. Others are more specific but still raise questions about what their claims really mean. The term for ads and labels that promise more environmental benefit than they deliver is “greenwashing.” Today, some critics are asking whether the impact of greenwashing can go beyond a breach of marketing ethics—can greenwashing actually harm health?

Greenwash: Growing (Almost) Unchecked

Greenwashing is not a recent phenomenon; since the mid-1980s the term has gained broad recognition and acceptance to describe the practice of making unwarranted or overblown claims of sustainability or environmental friendliness in an attempt to gain market share.

Although greenwashing has been around for many years, its use has escalated sharply in recent years as companies have strived to meet escalating consumer demand for greener products and services, according to advertising consultancy TerraChoice Environmental Marketing. Last year TerraChoice issued its second report2 on the subject, identifying 2,219 products making green claims—an increase of 79% over the company’s first report two years earlier.3 TerraChoice also concluded that 98% of those products were guilty of greenwashing. Furthermore, according to TerraChoice vice president Scot Case, the problem is escalating.

TerraChoice also measured green advertising in major magazines and found that between 2006 and 2009, the number mushroomed from about 3.5% of all ads to just over 10%; today, Case says, the number is probably higher still. Case says researchers are currently working on another update that will be released later this year, and he predicts the number of products making dubious green claims will double.

Compounding the problem is the fact that environmental advertising—in the United States, at least—is not tightly regulated. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the agency responsible for protecting the public from unsubstantiated or unscrupulous advertising, does have a set of environmental marketing guidelines known as the Green Guides. Published under Title 16 of the Code of Federal Regulations,4 the Green Guides were created in 1992 and most recently updated in 1998. According to Laura DeMartino, assistant director of the FTC Division of Enforcement, the proliferation of green claims in the marketplace includes claims that are not currently addressed in the Green Guides, and updated guidance currently is being developed.

The FTC originally planned to begin a review of the Green Guides in 2009, but the commission moved the schedule up, according to DeMartino, in response to a changing landscape in environmental marketing. “The reason, at least anecdotally, was an increase in environmental marketing claims in many different sectors of the economy and newer claims that were not common, and therefore not addressed, in the existing Guides,” she says. “These are things like carbon offsets or carbon-neutrality claims, terms like ‘sustainable’ or ‘made with renewable materials.’”

More: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.118-a246

[NNadir]

1. Just remember that BP is "Beyond Petroleum," and that "BP Solar" will rock the world. K&R.

[kristopher]

2. Like greenwashing nuclear by saying *only* CO2 is a threat...

As if that made one of the most toxic and dangerous technologies on the planet safe?

[NNadir]

6. Actually, the scientifically illiterate dangerous fossil fuel supported anti-nuke industry can't

understand the difference between "threats" and observed reality.

The anti-nuke industry would rather talk endlessly about atoms of tritium under a plant that have had and will have zero consequence, while arguing that CO₂ that is distributed all over the planet is "managable."

There is NOT ONE anti-nuke who can show that anyone has died from used nuclear fuel storage in the 50 year history of nuclear power, and there is also NOT ONE who gives a rat's ass about the many thousands of people who will die in the next month from climate effects, carcinogenic polycylic aromatics, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxide, heavy metals, carbon particles or any of the other stuff about which they maintain, as a badge of honor, complete and total ignorance.

Incredibly, they hate the sciences of nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics, and demean the professionalism of nuclear engineers, all from a position, again, of complete and total ignorance.\

If the stupid fuckers in the dangerous fossil fuel funded anti-nuke industry were actually able to demonstrate that the American commercial nuclear industry had actually killed someone in this country over the last 50 years, never mind if it were a fraction of the people that the dangerous fossil fuel kills every damn day, they would scream illiterately about it.

However, nuclear power need not be perfect to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy. It only needs to be vastly superior, which it is.

Have a nice "no problem with PAH's in the Gulf" kind of BP/car CULTure greenwashing day.

[bananas]

3. There's a lot of nuclear greenwashing right here on DU

And they don't just greenwash nuclear energy, they also attack environmentalists and environmental organizations.

[XemaSab]

4. Like there isn't solar and wind greenwashing

n/t

[bananas]

7. Good example - solar and wind actually are green technologies.

In addition to attacking environmentalists and environmental organizations, they also attack green technologies like solar and wind.

[XemaSab]

8. They can be green

Or not.

[kestrel91316]

5. Well, it's not really "they". It's "he".