A Primer on Greenwashing: What to Look For and How to Avoid It

G.I. Joe taught me as a little boy that "knowing is half the battle", but unless you give legs to that knowledge, it's relatively useless.

Last November Green Daily uncovered the "6 sins of greenwashing", by TerraChoice [.pdf].

What Are the 6 Sins?

1. Hidden Trade Off, in which companies highlight one eco-friendly attribute, and ignore their product's other (potentially more significant) environmental concerns.
2. No Proof, which, just like it sounds, involves claims that can't be verified (the report found 26% of environmental claims fall into this category).
3. Vagueness -- terms like "chemical-free," or "non-toxic," which are both universally true, and universally false depending on your interpretation.
4. Irrelevance, when companies make claims that -- while true -- are unhelpful (like "CFC-free," when CFCs have been banned for almost 30 years).
5. Lesser of Two Evils -- like "green" herbicides, which ignores the fact that herbicides in any form aren't good for the environment.
6. Fibbing. The most obvious, in which companies flat out lie (less than 1% of companies make this mistake, but does happen).

TerraChoice says:

In an effort to describe, understand, and quantify the growth of greenwashing, TerraChoice Environmental Marketing Inc. conducted a survey of six category-leading big box stores. Through these surveys, we identified 1,018 consumer products bearing 1,753 environmental claims. Of the 1,018 products examined, all but one made claims that are demonstrably false or that risk misleading intended audiences (which is to say that all but one committed at least one of the Six Sins of Greenwashing).

According to Green Parenting Blog, Eco Child's Play, the word "natural" officially means nothing...at least not to the FDA. Unfortunately, according to a study commissioned by Burt's Bees, 78% of consumers believed that “natural” claims ARE regulated.

The words "non-toxic" and "organic" are losing their value too. Many companies plaster "all-natural" and "non-toxic" all over their products when in reality there might be one measly plant extract in a cespool of physically and environmentally damaging garbage.

Recently, many bloggers have begun to speak out in mass against greenwashing. Green blogger super hero, No Impact Man, sure has joined the fight.

How Can You Avoid the Greenwash Brush?
The above TerraChoice .pdf is the best resource to check for that, but a few starters are:

• Shop for products with multi-attribute instead of single attribute eco-labels.

2 good multi-attribute labels are GreenSeal and EcoLogo

• Ask questions to uncover evidence of the Six Sins

Some examples might be: "Is the “green” claim restricted to just one, or a narrow set of environmental issue(s)?" and, "Does the claim help me find more information and evidence?"

Personally, sin #5, Lesser of 2 Evils, isn't a big issue to me. Isn't it better to at least be doing SOMETHING rather than NOTHING? I think this is where activists get carried away with feeling like a person or company must go to the ultimate extreme, or don't go at all.

I'm of the feeling that every step helps, even it's a small one. Now in that same vein, don't paint a small step as if it were a giant leap either.

Are these Six Sins of Greenwashing important to you? How do you avoid the buckets and buckets of greenwash these days?