'Greenwashing:' combating untrue green advertising
Todd N. Hansen
Issue date: 9/26/08 Section: News
Marketing executives are always looking for an edge, and competition is as tough as ever in most markets.
A unique advertising idea that makes consumers flock towards a company is sometimes risky and hard to find. Most companies take safer routes; they use broad ideas that everyone likes.
Among the current ideas that everyone seems to advertise is the idea of being "green." A company can achieve this in many ways. As a consequence, the term "green" is still very ambiguous.
Using recycled material certainly makes a company green, as does cutting the number of miles you ship materials. The problem is when companies make claims of being green when they are not. Pretending to be called green is greenwashing.
Is there a standard that can be set to determine who is green and who is not?
Scot Case is the vice president of Terrachoice Environmental Marketing, an organization that identifies six deadly sins of greenwashing.
According to Terrachoice, the first is the sin of hidden trade off. This happens when a company claims to produce energy efficient electronics, but does so at the expense of using hazardous material.
The next sin is being too vague, like claiming to be 100 percent natural when some material is still hazardous. Showing no proof is a sin because some companies advertise being organic but do not have the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic stamp.
Being irrelevant is the next sin, which could be claiming to not use a chemical when it is already banned. The fifth sin is outright lying, and the last is claiming to be the lesser of two evils.
The problem with greenwashing is that companies that do make an effort to go green get their efforts wasted. Joel Makower recently issued The State of Green Business 2008 on greenbiz.com.
"There are very few standards for what is a green product, let alone a green company," Makower said. "And that's a problem."
In some areas of marketing, a government agency steps in to regulate. Various types of foods can claim to be organic, but only food items with the USDA organic stamp really are.
A unique advertising idea that makes consumers flock towards a company is sometimes risky and hard to find. Most companies take safer routes; they use broad ideas that everyone likes.
Among the current ideas that everyone seems to advertise is the idea of being "green." A company can achieve this in many ways. As a consequence, the term "green" is still very ambiguous.
Using recycled material certainly makes a company green, as does cutting the number of miles you ship materials. The problem is when companies make claims of being green when they are not. Pretending to be called green is greenwashing.
Is there a standard that can be set to determine who is green and who is not?
Scot Case is the vice president of Terrachoice Environmental Marketing, an organization that identifies six deadly sins of greenwashing.
According to Terrachoice, the first is the sin of hidden trade off. This happens when a company claims to produce energy efficient electronics, but does so at the expense of using hazardous material.
The next sin is being too vague, like claiming to be 100 percent natural when some material is still hazardous. Showing no proof is a sin because some companies advertise being organic but do not have the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic stamp.
Being irrelevant is the next sin, which could be claiming to not use a chemical when it is already banned. The fifth sin is outright lying, and the last is claiming to be the lesser of two evils.
The problem with greenwashing is that companies that do make an effort to go green get their efforts wasted. Joel Makower recently issued The State of Green Business 2008 on greenbiz.com.
"There are very few standards for what is a green product, let alone a green company," Makower said. "And that's a problem."
In some areas of marketing, a government agency steps in to regulate. Various types of foods can claim to be organic, but only food items with the USDA organic stamp really are.
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