How Clean Is Your Green?

How clean is your green? Recently, following my passions I have been reading up on green marketing and the incredible power it has. We want to buy products that are good for the environment, be consumers supporting companies that promising all they can to our eco-friendly needs. With all this positive change to our culture, I also learn of a term called Greenwashing also known as Green Sheen. Whitewashing with a green brush.

Greenwashing is a misleading perception of a company’s product or policy that claims they are ‘greening their business’ but in actuality it’s a spin on an old game. More time or money is being spent in advertising being green than spent on resources to create environmentally sound practices. Examples of this include changing a name or label that bring to mind a sense of nature or environment (Placing pinetrees on a bottle of harmful cleaning supplies.)

Examples of greenwashing can be seen in massive advertisement campaigns such as the ‘Human Element’ promoted by Dow, a known polluter and producer of harmful chemicals. Another shining example of putting the spin on things happened in 2001 when British Petroleum spent 200 million dollar rebranding, creating “Beyond Petroleum” and a shiny, white, clean flowered sunburst that couldn’t possibly hurt the environment. It all seemed to catch up with BP last summer and a wake up call to consumers around the world. Another example includes packaging that boasts environmentally friendly imagery or snack food that is labeled ‘organic’ without any sort of real certifications to prove its innocence. A bank that conducts your finances online and still mails you all the paperwork to you and prints out everything for your records. Picking paper or plastic at the grocery store. Both these options suck!

A truly remarkable website was developed by the University of Oregon and the EnviroMedia Social Marketing firm called Greenwashing Index (www.greenwashingindex.com.) Greenwashing Index has very basic goals; help consumers become more knowledgeable about environmental marketing and hold businesses accountable. Consumers can vote on the most authentic campaigns and the worst offenders, creating a realistic portrayal of companies, non-profits, and corporations by the people, for the people. Some highlights from their website’s Voted Worst Offenders include Sara Lee’s Earth Grain, Fiji Water, Coca-Cola, Ortho Ecosense Outdoor Insect Killer and my personal favorite Fur is Green.com. You have to ask what were these companies really thinking? To leave you with a positive note, the Greenwashing Index has a full list of Best Rated Products. Its not all bad but the consumer decides. Genesis!

Image is everything in 2011, and being green shows something about yourself but also how you treat the environment and others. Eco Friendly living is a part of who we are, whether it is saving natural resources, animals, or the all mighty dollar we practice it everyday. All of the readers of this blog including myself want to live green to the best of our ability, because it makes sense. Greenwashing is an unfortunate side effect to positive production and knowledgeable consumerism. What we need to focus on is accountability, innovation, asking questions, being curious, and striving to make this world a place that future generations wont be stuck with the bill from our party.