Beware of Greenwashing!
What is greenwashing and what can you do to protect yourself?

Companies have started realizing that doing good for the planet is good for business. Unfortunately, they’ve also figured out that making consumers think they’re doing good can be just as beneficial. This deception is known as “greenwashing.” The term refers to a marketing technique whereby a company falsely claims to have taken environmentally friendly actions.

According to a 2007 report by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, a large majority of environmental marketing claims are inaccurate, inappropriate, or unsubstantiated. Some good news can be had in the fact that the Federal Trade Commission is currently looking to tighten its voluntary environmental marketing guidelines. However, keep in mind that these will still be voluntary, not enforced.

The most blatant greenwashers are often large corporations that have had a controversial environmental past, such as chemical, oil and car companies. For example, an energy corporation might tout the fact that it’s investing millions of dollars in sustainable sources of energy while concurrently dumping toxins into public waterways.

A more easily identifiable form of greenwashing can be found at your grocery store. Numerous companies have started using the word “natural” on their household cleaning and personal care products to entice consumers who are looking for an eco-friendly alternative. “Natural” may sound healthy and planet-friendly but it means very little since there is no third-party certification required to make that claim.

Here are some ways you can identify greenwashing:

1. Examine the claim. Is the product certified by a legitimate third party organization? Are they claiming that the entire product is green or just some of the ingredients/materials?

2. Ask for proof. Is the company willing to provide a copy of the environmental standard or testing protocol? Is the process open, public and transparent? Does it address the product’s lifecycle and larger environmental effects?

3. Check for consistency. If this is an international organization, are they selling the same products in other countries? If they advertised themselves as ‘green’, are they still doing what they claim to be doing six months or a year after the ad came out?

4. Follow the money. What organizations is the company supporting? Who are they donating their money to?

To learn more about greenwashing and companies that are and are not doing it, check you these sites:

• Corp Watch

• The EnviroMedia Greenwashing Index

• Greener Choices

• Do The Right Thing

You might not believe this but I had never been to a Wal-Mart until… last week. Yikes! As I walked around the vast expanse dedicated to the convenient consumption of goods, my head was turning. Row after row of clothing, car batteries, beauty products, organic produce, bicycles, cameras, cookware. And there was more. People were getting their taxes done and indulging in manicures. Others were lunching at a McDonald’s. It was enormous, a real shopping behemoth. A one-stop shop.

To be completely honest, I felt a bit overwhelmed. I have just spent the last couple of years living in Central America where the farmer’s market I went to on Fridays was larger than the local supermarkets. I also tend to favor smaller “mom and pop” stores or local markets where I can get to know the shopkeepers, so the Wal-Mart shopping experience was completely new to me.

Of course I have heard about Wal-Mart, especially since it decided to go green last year. But being inside the store and browsing through all the products was impressive and I finally understand, if there are 5200 stores today with new ones being built all the time, how Wal-Mart could have such an influence on markets in general and on the environmental movement in particular with their decision to go green. While there will inevitably be things to criticize about the business practices of a giant enterprise like Wal-Mart, I have to say that I have been pretty impressed with some of their green initiatives.

One of their programs works with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and seeks to offset every acre they develop for their stores with an acre of priority wildlife habitat in one of the largest public-private partnerships of its kind. Another program seeks to raise the bar for electronics suppliers by having them analyze the sustainability of the products they sell at Wal-Mart. Certainly, if Wal-Mart can use their size and influence to encourage more sustainable practices in the electronics industry, more power to them.

As you can imagine, as I was strolling through the store one of my big concerns was the seafood counter. There seemed to be enough fish to feed a small army to say nothing of the Jacuzzi-sized lobster tank filled with those unfortunate creatures. Fortunately, as the largest seller of fish in the US, Wal-Mart has considered their impact on fisheries that reached capacity a long time ago. Over the next 3-5 years, Wal-Mart will switch their purchase of wild-caught seafood to that which is certified sustainable by the independent and non-profit Marine Stewardship Council as well as define guidelines for the purchase of farm raised fish with industry experts. This is truly cause for celebration because there is a desperate need for us to change the way we manage the ocean’s fisheries and Wal-Mart is poised to make a very important contribution towards achieving a more sustainable approach to providing for a seafood hungry society.

There are a lot of ways to have a positive impact on our world at the individual and corporate level. When Wal-Mart announced they would carry organic foods, they became - in the blink of an eye - the largest organic food retailer. Now they are poised to become the largest retailer of sustainable seafood, which could potentially help to protect small fishermen and drive down the cost of environmentally-responsible aquaculture technology. The implications of a decision by Wal-Mart to go green is enormous and reaches into everyone’s lives- even those of us who don’t shop there. Economies of scale, so often the bain of the environmentalists when it comes to companies like Wal-Mart, could suddenly become part of the solution.

As I was reviewing some of my favorite websites and blogs today, I came across a description of “stuff” on www.WorldChanging.com that I wanted to share with you. Being an environmentalist and a consumer is sometimes hard to reconcile but I found this to be a very eloquent account of the importance of being informed and thoughtful about what we buy.

“Our things define us.

What we buy, what we use, what we keep and throw away, what we waste, and what we save: the stuff that surrounds us and flows through our lives is a key indicator of the kinds of lives we’re living. To be an affluent twenty-first-century person is to float on a sea of material objects - each with its own history and future.

They may be hidden from our eyes, but in practical global terms, those histories and futures tend to be the most important aspects of the stuff we own.”

Do you want to know more about “Strategic Consumption” and how you can send major market signals that will help to shift the production practices of the industries that supply us with our “stuff”? Check out this excellent blog entry by Alex Steffen.