When I first read this question, posed by environmental marketing agency TerraChoice, the initial knee-jerk response that popped into my head was something along the lines of “too many”.
I’m no marketing expert, but for some reason, 2008 brought an explosion of seemingly sudden environmental conscientiousness to the masses (a good thing), and advertisers were on that “like a fat kid on a smartie” (not quite so good).
Suddenly words like ‘green’, ‘natural’, ’sustainable’ and ‘eco-friendly’ became marketing juggernauts, and they began appearing on everything from bleach to hummers to fur coats to fuel to even the most heavily processed of food-like-substances. And like most people, I viewed the majority of these claims with a sort of tired and annoyed skepticism.
This year’s release of TerraChoice’s Greenwashing Report in general held no surprises, but a few of the specifics shocked even me - and I had already assumed that most companies were just being opportunistic truth-stretchers, at best.
The Report found that more products made environmental claims in 2008 than in previous years - not a surprise. What I had underestimated was the sheer growth in the total number of ‘green’ products over the span of one year, which increased by an average of 79% between 2007 and 2008. And advertising for these ‘green’ products almost tripled between 2006 and 2008.
TerraChoice conducted the survey in reference to what they’ve dubbed
The Seven Sins of Greenwashing:
1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-off
2. Sin of No Proof
3. Sin of Vagueness
4. Sin of Worshiping False Labels
5. Sin of Irrelevance
6. Sin of Lesser of Two Evils
7. Sin of Fibbing
They’re all pretty self-explanatory, but do take a peek at their website for elaboration on each one (and some great character illustrations as well).
According to the report, over 98% of ‘green’ products committed at least one of the Sins. Of the 2,219 studied products claiming to green in the United States and Canada, only 25, or less than 2% were found to be Sin-free.
Now, I don’t know how scientifically robust studies like this really are, and there is the obvious agenda of the company publishing the report to consider. However, overall, provided the appropriate perspective is kept, I think the report is certainly well worth a read.
Visit: The Greenwashing Report 2009
While it saddens me to see this sort of confirmation of the sheer prevalence of ‘greenwashing’ (or less euphemistically, lying to well meaning people in the hopes of making a quick buck), it does give me a bit of hope that we may begin to see some semblance of accountability - even if it has to be forced by watchdog groups and individual consumers.
Greenwashers make those of us who are genuinely trying to do things the honest way look bad, simply because we tend to get swept into the same pile. It’s my hope that consistent transparency on our part, and vigilance on the part of consumers will be our saviors in this case.
