5 Summaries of Suggested Readings

Greenwash’: A Way to Say ‘Hogwash’:

More and more companying are using stickers and signs say that they are using green products. These stickers/ seals are being put on everything from lumber to recycled things. The most recognized seal of approval is the U.S. Green Building Council. This is a nonprofit group that promotes energy efficient and environmental benefits in construction and design. They established criteria to measure how efficient buildings are. So far 450 buildings have received some certification from them. One thing while testing out the buildings the company learned that verifying recycled content of an item is very difficult because a lab test cannot always reveal what something is made of. After testing and talking to companies about the things they use people have learned that if you have some sort of certification, it OK. Don’t believe this until you know for a fact it is safe or not. Some day there will be a certifying system that works for everything but for now you have to do the research yourself.

Glater, Johnathan. May 17, 2006. “‘Greenwash’: A Way to Say ‘Hogwash’”. The New York Times. November 11th 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/business/businessspecial2/17certify.html


Deceptive Greenwashing Aims to Trick Ecotourists:

Not everything that has a green label deserves it. TerraChoice Environmental Marketing found that 99% of green labeling do not follow up to their claims. Analysts say that one of the main problems to this has to do with the definition of ecotourism and the interpretations of being green. Some companies do try to strive to have reusable and environmental friendly products, while others rather just have the label and continuing what they normally do. Ayako Ezaki from The International Ecotourism Society defines ecotourism as responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well being of local people. Ezaki started looking further into traveling companies to see if they were living up to their green advertising. He found that Orbitz was only meeting only one of the four environmental criteria. But the problem with this is Orbitz relies on hotels to marketing materials to determine if it meets the green criteria. Ezaki wishes that there would be a global site that could tell what hotels are green friendly and are not. He knows something like this is very hard to do and will take time to make but for now customers will have to rely on nonprofit organizations and their own personal research.
Judkis, Maura. May 23rd 2008. “Deceptive Greenwashing Aims to Trick Ecotourists”. U.S. News. November 11th 2009. http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2008/05/23/deceptive-greenwashing-aims-to-trick-ecotourists.html


Wal-Mart's organic milk not really organic, say critics; "greenwashing" scam alleged:

Wal-Mart has been selling organic food for a while now, milk happens to be the most popular idem. Wal-Mart started making its own organic milk, which is being produced by the company Aurora Organic Dairy. Customers started to worry that the milk might be selling diluted organic milk. Senior farm analysis at the Cornucopia Institution, Mark Kastel said that Wal-Mart is trying to make producing milk as cheap as possible. Wal-Mart and Aurora both said that they are following the Agriculture Department’s standards for organic dairy. Aurora said that they have only 4,000 cows on a farm which is compared to a non organic farm which can normally have up to 25,000 cows. Agriculture Department says that they are planning to up the requirements for milk to be called organic causing Aurora to reduce the number of cows on a facility, triple the grazing area for their food and open up another farm. Kastel was not impressed with what Aurora was saying. He said that Aurora was just greenwashing. He said that they are doing things the cheap way instead of doing things the healthy way. Customers say that Wal-Mart doesn’t have to go the cheap and biggest supplier, they should go with someone who does the procedures right.

Unknown. September 21, 2006. “Wal-Mart's organic milk not really organic, say critics; "greenwashing" scam alleged”. Natural News. November 11th 2009. http://www.naturalnews.com/020481_organic_milk_Wal-Mart_cows.html

Greenwashing- A National Sin?:

In 2007, TerraChoice released a report stating that “Of the 2,219 North American products surveyed, over 98% committed at least one of the previously identified Six Sins of Greenwashing and a new Seventh Sin emerged." Research done by TerraChoice showed that not all companies are engaging in greenwash, even though a majority of companies are.

Here is a summary of the seven sins:

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-off, committed by suggesting a product is 'green' based on an unreasonably narrow set of attributes without attention to other important environmental issues. If something comes from nature or a natural thing doesn’t always mean that it is green. An example of that would be paper.

2. Sin of No Proof, committed by an environmental claim that cannot be substantiated by easily accessible supporting information or by a reliable third-party certification. Pretty much if there isn’t any proof then chances it could not be healthy.

3. Sin of Vagueness, committed by every claim that is so poorly defined or broad that its real meaning is likely to be misunderstood by the consumer. It may have the title of being green but doesn’t have any information to back it up with actual “green” ingredients.

4. Sin of Irrelevance, committed by making an environmental claim that may be truthful but is unimportant or unhelpful for consumers seeking environmentally preferable products.

5. Sin of Lesser of Two Evils, committed by claims that may be true within the product category,

but that risk distracting the consumer from the greater environmental impacts of the category

as a whole. Fuel-efficient cars is an example of this.

6. Sin of Fibbing is committed by making environmental claims that are simply false. The most common examples were products falsely claiming to be Energy Star certified or registered.

7. The Sin of False Labels, is committed by a product that, through either words or images, gives the impression of third-party endorsement where no such endorsement actually exists.

Walker, Dean. June 29, 2009. “Greenwashing- A National Sin?” BrooWaha. November 11th 2009. http://www.broowaha.com/articles/4948/greenwashing-a-national-sin


A Brief History of Greenwash:

During the contemporary environmental movement of the mid 60’s companies started to use environmental images ads on their products in order to promote them. In these images were normally eco-friendly. This initial wave of this greenwashing was labeled as ecopornography. This was the time of the anti nuclear movement. People were not happy about the nuclear testing so the nuclear power division ran a few ads that stated "everywhere, extolling the anti-polluting virtues of atomic power" as "'reliable, low-cost...neat, clean, safe.'" Other companies used these types of greenwashing in order to promote their products. As time went on companies and people became smarter and more aware of greenwashing.

In the early 90’s, a poll was done that showed that 77% of customers are affected and buy things due to a corporation's environmental reputation. Another poll done showed that 84% of people considered corporate environmental crimes more serious than insider trading or price fixing. Because of these polls companies tried to go as green as they could go. One fourth of new products made were labeled as recyclable, "biodegradable" "ozone friendly" or "compostable”.

Throughout the next few years some of the world's greatest polluters spent millions on making their products seem more “green”. A few of the companies started to put animal friendly images on their packaging, some started to use wording like “environment safe” and “good for the air” and others statements that were earth friendly.

While all of this was going on in the US, Europe was dealing with greenwashing itself. A Swiss chemical corporation was trying to restore its image after the 1986 Basel spill. They ran advertisements which made them look like they were environmental friendly by using a forest, a tranquil pond, and a clean looking river. A corporation in Great Britain, which happened to be considered one of world's largest producers of the ozone, advertised its use "a new generation of ozone friendly fluorocarbons" to cover up its real use of air pollution.

Third world country companies also were starting to use greenwashing. Countries like India, Malaysia, Argentina and Brazil were using greenwashing as ways to get customers to feel safer for using their products.

Even though it seemed like the world was being brained washed and fooled by companies and their greenwashing, people started finding ways to detect through the greenwashing ads. They came up with things to look for when researching a product. They also found ways to tell the average consumer about greenwashing and how to not to be fooled by it.

Karliner, Joshua. March 22nd 2001. “A Brief History of Greenwash”. Corp Watch. November 7th 2009. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=243