News

It’s Earth Day. At least the “official” Earth Day – hopefully every day is Earth Day for you and your business. If it is, Huzzah! If it isn’t, please do NOT advertise yourself as “green” when you are not.

Advertising that your company or products are “green” when in fact they are not is called “Greenwashing.” This practice has grown by, according to some estimates, as much as 79% in the past year, and spawned think tanks and companies whose sole purpose is to call out those stores, brands and products who “greenwash.”

According to researchers, the most common categories that fall victim to greenwashing are baby products, cosmetics and cleaning products. Just because that glass cleaner says “safe and natural” does not make it so.

As a wise frog once said, it ain’t easy bein’ green – so let’s get educated and, please, don’t promote yourself as “green” if you aren’t.

Here are two places to start your disillusionment, er, education:

• Terra Marketing, an environmental marketing firm, produces an annual report about Greenwashing and released the “7 Sins of  Greenwashing” in January.
• EnviroMedia & the University of Oregon created  the Greenwashing Index website that lets users post ads and then rate their “green” claims on a scale of 1 (“authentic”) to 5 (“bogus”).