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Welcome to the Green Age.
We live in a time in which the threats of yesteryear are staring us right in the face. Gone are the warnings and predictions; summations and theories. The global problems terrorizing us now--climate change, deforestation, global warming, ocean pollution--are all too real and all too proactive to ignore.
So, we do what we have to survive. We build windmills to power our homes. We write legislation that spends months in deliberation. We construct fish robots to patrol the ocean.
Clearly, the times are changing, and not just out of the sake of progress; out of necessity. Yet, despite the facts, studies, and historical references that are all screaming “ACT NOW!” there are those big, industrial smoke stacks that just can’t help but slow things down for all of us.
Among the most common and rampant polluters of our time are big corporations. BP alone harvests barrels and barrels of oil out of the Alberta Tar Sands, each of which sends 2/3 of a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. When it comes to environmental damage, this puts them somewhere between the Exxon Valdez and the meteor that killed all the dinosaurs.
In a green age, how do companies like this survive; especially companies like Palm-Oil, GM, and Monsanto, who have been known to contribute more to destroying the earth than many others? Do they adapt, and search for new ways to both maintain their company’s success without causing more damage? Do they seek out environmentally friendly alternatives to the practices that have caused so much harm?
No. Even in a time when our very survival depends on every individual’s actions, they simply do what big corporations do best.
They lie.
They lie harder and faster than they ever have; turning any hope there may be about being on the same team into an insidious slap across the face of the world.
These particular lies have become known as “greenwashing,” or making claims about themselves regarding their “green” practices and how they are doing their best to pitch in, when in reality, this is a mere cloak-and-dagger act to boost sales.
“All natural.” “Environmentally safe.” “Chemical-free.”
What do these terms mean? Consumers who believe they are doing the right thing may see one of these phrases written on a bottle of dish soap and toss it in their shopping cart, assuming they’re doing the environmentally responsible thing.
In reality, this horribly ambiguous tactic is one of several ways that companies have found to exploit the green shopper.
In November 2007, TerraChoice, an environmental marketing firm, launched a study to find out just how unbridled and widespread greenwashing really was. Fortunately, a total of one out of 1,018 products tested were not guilty of any of the seven classified types of greenwashing.
Unfortunately, a bit of simple math will reveal that 1,017 products were completely guilty of at least one of the classifications.
TerraChoice’s types of greenwashing are:
- Claiming what little green truths a product has, but not mentioning the much larger harmful ways it is produced or effects it can cause.
- Making a claim with no proof.
- Being too ambiguous.
- Making an irrelevant claim (“chemical-free”? Water is a chemical, genius).
- Calling a product green that, by definition, is not green (cigarettes, herbicides)
- Good ol’ fashioned lyin’.
Not only does this type of marketing deceive consumers, it wastes their purchase which would have gone for something that was green had they known better, and creates doubt about green products as a whole.
So, what motivates companies to slow progress like this? Mere greed?
And can it be stopped?
The bad news is that, no, nothing can stop greed from happening. But an important factor here is that not all greenwashing is done on purpose; and, although it may be tough to admit, the corporations aren’t totally at fault.
Which is to say, we should’ve seen this coming.
Many of the products tested on their true level of “green” were only in violation of one or two of the classified types of greenwashing. This is indicative of an ignorance on their part of what constitutes something as “green,” rather than purposeful trickery.
This is not to say that there weren’t plenty of companies who were clearly running greenwashing campaigns with the intent of boosting sales (being in violation of all forms of the act), but it is true that “green” is not a clearly defined term.
The FTC is in need of a better determination of what this means, as they are in charge of making sure a product is what it says it is, and the EPA has been far too liberal in handing out its treasured “Energy Star” emblem, which appears on products that meet certain environmental standards (or in this case…don’t).
The combination of these two issues, plus the inability of a corporation to recognize what “green” means, adds up to aisles full of shipments filling American homes with “GREEN!” plastered all over the box, bottle, or tank, when the truth may be far from it.
At this point, greenwashing seems like such an unnecessary roadblock on the path to a cleaner planet. Sadly, it is already a part of the problem, so the best that we can do is piece together some solutions.
You can start by looking for the right labels. There is a veritable sea of green stickers being slapped on products out there, but only a few of them are genuine.
These two are the ones you want to look for. Both EcoLogo and Green Seal track a product’s environmental impact from the aspects that make it up to how it is actually made. It also helps to be aware of the wording of any sort of “green” claim. Is it weirdly ambiguous? Claiming not to contain something that is illegal? Sound completely irrelevant? That’s probably because it is.
With third-party companies and careful consideration, greenwashing can at the very least be deterred. It may be ridiculous that we are forced to face problems like this one amidst a multitude of other cataclysmic issues, but this is the Green Age, and some people just want to make a buck.
We’ve adapted before, we can adapt again, and we can certainly adapt to this. But one has to wonder what sinister plans they’ll come up with next.
