farmdoc's blog post number 443

This is an age of gradually increasing public environmental awareness. It’s also an age of sophisticated mass marketing that, by and large, is a vital cog in the materialist, capitalist, machine – which like most machines is environmentally destructive, or at least unsustainable. Enter the scourge known as greenwashing, i.e. the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service. There are some environmentally sound and sustainable practices, products and services that are marketed factually and responsibly. But I’ve long intuited that the vast majority of so-called environmental marketing is mere greenwash. Last week my suspicion was confirmed when TerraChoice, which calls itself ‘North America’s premiere environmental marketing agency’, released its Greenwashing Report 2009. The Report reveals that in an Australian survey of 866 products making at least one environmental claim, a staggering 98% of the 1,937 ‘green’ claims committed at least one of TerraChoice’s ‘Seven Sins of Greenwashing’. ‘Green’ (and green) products and ‘green’ (and green) advertising are increasing rapidly. The message? Consumers do have greener product choices, but we must scrutinise all labelling, and avoid products committing any of the Seven Sins.