Six Sins of Greenwashing
December 17th, 2007
TerraChoice, an environmental marketing company, have created a website entitled “The Six Sins of Greenwashing“. The list has interesting points to make so I thought I’d write about them here. First on the list is “the sin of the hidden trade-off”:
Okay, this product comes from a sustainably harvested forest, but what are the impacts of its milling and transportation? Is the manufacturer also trying to reduce those impacts?
I’m torn on this “sin”. On one hand, TerraChoice are right to point out that ticking one box is hardly making your company entirely environmentally-friendly, and that if an organisation really wants to be “green”, they should implement changes throughout to better minimise their environmental impact. On the other, however, is the fact that all decisions are trade-offs, especially in something as complicated as environmental friendliness. You have to chose whether your child’s pyjamas are going to be flame-proof or non-carcinogenic, whether your electricity production is carbon-neutral or free from nuclear waste, whether using disposable tissues offsets the energy costs of washing handkerchiefs, and so on. The end result being that no process can be entirely “green” or sustainable, especially when the end result has to be an affordable product.
TerraChoice also highlight “the sin of fibbing”, which hinges on products that claim to be “certified organic” but in reality are not. This point stuck in my throat because “organic” is a completely arbitrary notion anyway, and there is no real way to certify because there are no concrete rules as to what constitutes “organic”. This is compounded by #2 on the list,”the sin of no proof”, which singles out companies that do not provide easy ways to verify the claims they make. (In this case they highlight claims of personal care products that claim not to be tested on animals, which is a moot point to us EU residents where animal testing of cosmetics is banned).
I’m still glad the list exists, and while I don’t agree with it all, it does provide some food for though. Check it out for yourself and see what you think.
Entry Filed under: General
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6 Comments Add your own
1. Martin | December 17th, 2007 at 11:17 am
They don’t actually describe their own certification requirements do they? As a consumer, if I see an ‘ecologo’ what does it mean? Nothing specific, proved, shown, etc…
I’m intrigued also that they seem to think that “Company websites … and toll-free phone numbers are easy and effective means of delivering proof.”
2. Mari | December 17th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Huge amount of documentation on EcoLogo’s certification requirements in every product category at the EcoLogo site: http://www.ecologo.org/en/seeourcriteria/
3. Brandon | December 22nd, 2007 at 1:37 am
It has been a while since I pointed out an error. The Term Organic could be arbitrary and has been misused. But there are many organizations who certify something being “organic.” For Example, just go look at the certification process on these websites.:
http://www.ccof.org/
http://www.usda.gov/
I know that the certification term can be taken out of context but you are implying any certification that uses that word is null because the real meaning of the word does not coincide with societies foundations of the word. Like the word Speakers. Most of society now accepts it as a sound emitting device, but by definition it was originally somebody who speaks. All food is organic, but we have set up a new meaning and there is plenty of certification (and very strict) for this new meaning.
4. Frank the SciencePunk | December 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I disagree with your example. A “speaker”, though it has multiple meanings, is clearly defined in all of these. One might be “a person who speaks” and another “an electronic sound-emitting device”.
Organic, on the other hand, has no concrete meaning within food production because it doesn’t have a discrete definition. Most people think it means food produced without fertilisers or pesticides, but neither is true. The choice of which additives are “organic” and which are not is arbitrarily decided by the certification panel, so in effect any logo or stamp is meaningless. None can claim any superiority over the others, because all are based on a hazy, ill-defined notion.
5. Brandon | December 23rd, 2007 at 8:39 am
I hope you don’t mind debating here.
If price was not a factor and you had to choose between two apples, one being organic certified by the USDA and the other just natural which in your scientific would you pick as being more Healthy for the Human Body?
Forget the speaker example, its a bad example. I just chose it because I felt the need to illustrate my point, and there is one on my desk.
6. Frank the SciencePunk | December 23rd, 2007 at 10:34 am
Neither is better. There’s no proof that I know of that shows organic food (whatever that means) is any better for you than regularly-produced crops.
Think about this: a plant needs nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium to grow. Whether these are supplied in manure or in pure NPK fertiliser has no effect on the quality of the chemicals - they are identical in both cases.
There are other arguments for organic, e.g. that organic crops return a much higher sale price per tonne than conventionally produced crops, which is good for farmers. However, organic crops need around twice as much acreage per tonne of food produced, which means more land converted to agriculture - hardly “environmentally-friendly”.
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