Green. All Natural. Eco Friendly.
While strolling through the store you will likely see these claims, and many more that jump out at you. With eco conscious consumers on the rise, it is important to know what products are really making a difference, and which are using environmental trends to boost sales.
Image courtesy of The Greenwashing Index
This is where greenwashing comes in. Greenwashing is when products claim to have environmental benefits, yet do not actually follow through. The practice is a double edge sword, because it is created by marketing teams, yet bought by consumers who do not put the time into learning about the product.
Image courtesy of The Greenwashing Blog
According to an Echo Global Corporate Social Responsibility study, 88% of consumers feel a responsibility to purchase products they think are socially and environmentally responsible. Along with that the CSR study has claimed that the most effective way to communicate this message is on the products package or label, followed closely behind by media and advertising. These numbers suggest that unless media covers the topic of greenwashing, then consumers will generally not look too much further into the claims the product is making beyond the label and their advertisements.
Image Courtesy of New York Times
Greenwashing causes a variety of problems from corporate to consumer, mostly because it is not often talked about. Most of the media coverage surrounding greenwashing is done from environmental blogs and the occasional news article. Because often the offenders are large scale companies that have a lot of power, their misnomers go unnoticed by the larger media.
Environmental Health Perspectives lays out The Seven Sins of Greenwashing as:
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 (e.g., paper produced from a sustainably harvested forest may still yield significant energy and pollution costs).
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 (e.g., paper products that claim various percentages of postconsumer recycled content without providing any evidence).
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 (e.g., “all-natural”).
Sin of irrelevance: committed by making an environmental claim that may be truthful but is unimportant or unhelpful for consumers seeking environmentally preferable products (e.g., “CFC-free” is meaningless given that chlorofluorocarbons are already banned by law).
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 health or environmental impacts of the category as a whole (e.g., organic cigarettes).
Sin of fibbing: committed by making environmental claims that are simply false (e.g., products falsely claiming to be Energy Star certified).
Sin of false labels: committed by exploiting consumers’ demand for third-party certification with fake labels or claims of third-party endorsement (e.g., certification-like images with green jargon such as “eco-preferred”).
Image courtesy of My Plastic Free Life
These greenwashing sins can cause confusion in consumers, who could in turn opt out of buying sustainable products all together. Along with that, products such as these discredit the a environmental movement toward sustainable consumption and is doing more harm than good. Since there are loose regulations on environmental advertising, and many of the terms used in eco labeling are overly broad, we see many companies that get away with mislabeling products.
Although this blog will focus on greenwashed consumer products, greenwashing can happen in a wide range of topics. Through analyzing media coverage of product greenwashing, we will be able to learn more about the practices of greenwashing and how it is perceived by media and the public. Throughout this blog I will specifically focus on the top 3 newspapers in the United States: The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, to analyze when and how they have covered this topic. I will also take a look at a couple of blogs that specifically focus on the problem of greenwashing and the impact all of these different media have on consumers.
Product Greenwashing 
It is a shame that “going green” has turned into a marketing strategy and that companies are just manipulating consumers who are trying to do the right thing. Your blog is so informative and very appealing aesthetically, good work girl!
Shelby Kaminski
LikeLike
Hello Rachel,
I must say you’re blog is very inviting and ascetically pleasing. The use of the green border correlates well with your topic and your header image is effective in preparing the viewer for what they’re about to read. Since we just read about greenwashing in the Cox textbook, I was happy to see someone was analyzing coverage of this type of marketing. You started off your blog well by clearly defining greenwashing and the use of pictures from different greenwashing organizations is an excellent way of depicting the variability of eco-friendly products. I had never heard of the rating scale, The Greenwashing Index, but putting this is in your blog is a good way to pass a useful tool along to others, so we can know which are the most truthful products out on the market. Also, providing the seven sins of greenwashing in bullet form was smart and neat. You reiterated a ton of concepts discussed in class, such as the sins just mentioned and the idea of false or mislabeling of products, to try to convince the consumer that they help the environment by purchasing that product. Great job!
Samantha Szabian
LikeLike