No Paint-by-Numbers

To avoid the sins of greenwashing, look between the lines

By Scot Case

Corporate responsibility officers frequently find themselves in tough positions. Striving to help their companies improve environmental and social performance, CROs want to promote an organization’s successes while simultaneously preventing others in the company from overstating accomplishments.

Unfortunately, as a recent in-store survey of product-specific environmental claims suggests, CROs might need to be a bit more vigilant about the environmental claims being made on product packaging.

After examining the environmental claims found on 1,018 products from six North American retailers, TerraChoice discovered that all but one of the products failed to meet the environmental marketing recommendations promoted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, International Standards Organization (ISO), and the publisher of Consumer Reports.

A TerraChoice report identifies the following “Six Sins of Greenwashing”:

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off: Focusing consumer attention on a single environmental issue such as recycled content or energy efficiency while ignoring additional important environmental issues such as toxic content or the impacts of the manufacturing process.

Examples: Paper products focusing only on recycled content while ignoring the significant impacts of the paper bleaching and manufacturing process and potentially hazardous liquid chemical products promoting their manufacture in solar-powered factories.

2. Sin of No Proof: Being unable or unwilling to provide proof of an environmental claim.

Examples: Manufacturers unable to provide independent proof of recycled content or that their products do not contain any hazardous materials.

3. Sin of Vagueness: Making broad, poorly defined environmental claims that are essentially meaningless.

Examples: Products claiming to be “chemical free” when even water is a chemical or products claiming to be “natural” when lots of naturally occurring substances are hazardous (e.g., arsenic, formaldehyde, and dioxins).

4. Sin of Fibbing: Making a blatantly false or misleading claim.

Examples: Products falsely claiming to be EcoLogo certified or products falsely claiming to meet the Energy Star standard.

5. Sin of Irrelevance: Making an accurate statement that is unimportant and unhelpful for consumers seeking more environmentally responsible products.

Examples: Products claiming to be Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC)-free even though CFCs were banned 20 years ago, or biodegradable garbage bags that will not degrade for thousands of years in a modern landfill.

6. Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils: Claiming environmental benefits for products that are actually harmful or that pose significant environmental challenges.

Example: Organic cigarettes.

Avoiding Greenwashing
As consumers increasingly examine the environmental dimensions of their purchases, companies need to provide meaningful and accurate information to help drive sales. They must be careful, however, not to overstate those benefits by committing one of the six sins of greenwashing.
CROs can help companies avoid the greenwashing temptation by asking the following questions when reviewing product-specific environmental claims:

• What type of environmental claim is being made?

Is it a claim about a single environmental attribute such as energy efficiency or recycled content or is it a broader claim that the product meets an environmental leadership standard? While incredibly valuable, single-attribute environmental claims do not address other potentially important human health and environmental issues and can mislead consumers.

• Is supporting information easily available to the consumer?

Consumers should have access to information supporting environmental claims. This could include a copy of an environmental performance standard, information about what it takes to prove a product meets it, and proof of compliance. The information can be made available on product packaging or a company website.

• How can consumers determine if the environmental claim is relevant?

Ensure legitimate environmental standard-setting and certification organizations such as EcoLogo and Green Seal validate the claim.

Scot Case is Vice President of TerraChoice Environmental Marketing.