Most ‘Green’ Products Making False Claims

It was bound to happen: as ‘green’ gained popularity with the public, more and more companies jumped on the bandwagon, just hoping to make a buck off the trend. Some of those products really are environmentally friendly, and an improvement over their conventional competitors. Others aren’t green at all – and a new study by TerraChoice Marketing has found that those ‘others’ actually make up 98% of the self-proclaimed ‘green’ products on the market.

From Reuters:

TerraChoice increased its list of greenwashing sins this year to seven from six, adding “worship of false labels” for marketers who mimic third-party environmental certifications on their products to entice consumers.

Other sins in the report include lack of proof, vagueness, irrelevance and outright lying. Products that make environmental claims and are sold in big box stores in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia were surveyed.

“The good news is that the growing availability of green products shows that consumers are demanding more environmentally responsible choices and that marketers and manufacturers are listening”, said TerraChoice Chief Executive Scott McDougall.

“The bad news is that TerraChoice’s survey of 2,219 consumer products in Canada and the U.S. shows that 98 percent committed at least one sin of greenwashing and that some marketers are exploiting consumers’ demand for third-party certification by creating fake labels or false suggestions of third-party endorsement.”

Those bastards! This is seriously a huge, vexing problem. It just underlines the fact that you can’t trust marketers and advertisers – they’ll do practically anything to sell a product. Many of them have zero scruples. The best thing you can do is research a company and its products as thoroughly as you can before purchasing. It’s too bad TerraChoice didn’t name names, or we’d at least know who we can trust for sure.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: SinsofGreenwashing.org

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