How to spot greenwashing

On Saturday I had a brief interview with Harvey Deegan on Perth’s 6PR radio station. We were chatting about greenwash, and I got a lot of interested reactions in my email and on Twitter about it, so I thought I’d post a little more about it here.

More and more people are going green these days, making changes in their lives. And more businesses are doing the same, in order to save money and their workers’ health as well as help the environment. But as always, there’s businesses out there who want to look like they’re doing the right thing without going to the effort of making changes to the way they work. And that’s what we call ‘greenwash’.

So how can we find the companies who are doing the right thing, while avoiding those who are just cashing in on our desire to live sustainably? Here’s some red flags to look out for:

1. Pretty packaging without any real information. You’ve seen them on the shelves: boxes and bottles with pictures of blue skies and green grass, or maybe made from that rough brown cardboard that looks recycled. But looking eco-friendly isn’t the same as being eco-friendly. A lot of the time these products are just the same as their brightly-coloured competitors, over-packaged and full of toxic chemicals.
2. Vague claims about the product being ‘natural’ or ‘green’. As I said to Harvey, arsenic is all-natural, but that doesn’t mean you’d want it inyour food, or your cleaning products! Natural and green are words anyone can use because they have no legal meaning, and aren’t enough to indicate that the product isn’t going to harm the environment.
3. Specific or very grand claims that have no proof. Maybe the product claims to be the most eco-friendly in Australia, or to be carbon-neutral. Says who? If there’s no more information than that, how can we be sure they’re telling the truth?

Luckily, there’s ways to check that you’re spending your hard-earned money on stuff that will actually be safe. And if you think about it, up until now you’ve been successfully working out the advertising claims made by lots of other businesses, so this is just taking what you already know and applying it to a new situation. Here’s some tips for picking the winners:

• Read the labels. Check the ingredients lists to see if they’re any different from competing products. If there’s a big claim made about how eco-friendly they are, there should be a note giving more information about this (like who gave them an eco-friendly award, or how they’ve gone carbon-neutral). It might be in small print, or it might be on their website. Don’t be shy about calling their customer support line if you’ve got questions! If they’re confident that they’re doing the right thing, they’ll say so and be happy to give you more information about it.
• Look for certification. All that label-reading can get boring, so you might like to let an independent organisation do the hard work instead. Choice Magazine has a list of environmental logos you can trust (plus a couple more specifically for eggs and meat).
• Trust your gut. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

If you do find anyone telling lies on their products, you can report them to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Remeber: there are businesses out there who are making real changes to their work, and they deserve our support. When you find a product that’s good for the environment, make sure you tell your friends so they can use it too. Don’t let the shonky salespeople stop you from finding the gems!