With the combined force of an extended season of red tide to the West and the onslaught of green slime to the North, environmentally friendly products are becoming even more of hot-button item in Florida. Companies have greenwashed their products for a possible bump in their product’s sales for years. Knowing whether these products are really environmentally friendly or greenwashed has become a much-needed skill for those who care about protecting the environment.
A greenwashed product or organization is described as a product or marketing campaign that is falsely marketed as environmentally-friendly when it is clearly not.
Greenwashing as a marketing tactic arose in 1985, with Chevron’s advertisements claiming that their use, extraction, and refining of oil was friendly and overall beneficial to the environment. BP has also used greenwashing to boost their profits. Shortly after their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP ran advertisements about their efforts to fund programs that rehabilitated the animals harmed and displaced by oil spills. This was an attempt to divert attention from their involvement in the oil spill that displaced and injured numerous species.
Greenwashing is not only limited to the companies actions themselves, but also to the packaging used and the products. Many companies have begun to label the packaging of their products as “recyclable” or “biodegradable” when neither is the case. Companies will also market products that are comprised of substances that are detrimental to the environment as eco-friendly because it contains some “natural ingredients”. Marketing tactics such as these show a blatant lack of regard for the safety and preservation of the environment given that these techniques allow for dangerous pollutants to seep into the environment without people using them knowing of the harm that they are causing.
Being able to determine if a product truly is eco-friendly or merely a greenwashed, sulfate-filled mess is just as important. Avoid vague claims and ambiguous ingredients on product labels, pay attention to how companies design, package, and market their products. Marketing tactics such as these are commonly used to throw off consumers who quickly look at the products without doing research into the products. Use of terminology such as “clean coal” or BP’s marketing of “clean energy” are perfect examples of greenwashing.
In the beverage industry, Nestle’s bottled water products are marketed as “the most environmentally friendly consumer product in the world,” according to Nestle.
While Fiji products, another water bottle company, have led to several outbreaks of Typhoid due to the fact that the exportation of Fiji water has caused the majority of Fiji’s population no access to clean drinking water.
The legality of greenwashing raises many concerns of the environmental protection both domestically and abroad. While greenwashing is legal, it should not be in order to show a step in the right direction towards an environmentally friendly world.
