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From Natural Life Magazine, May/June
2008 Greenwash – verb: the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service. Increasingly, consumers are voting for environmental sustainability with their dollars. For instance, the North American organic sector is said to be growing by 20 percent a year and the market for healthy, eco-friendly products has been estimated now to be worth over $200 billion annually in the U.S. alone. Many consumers are willing to pay significantly more for products branded “natural” or ”organic,” believing them to be of superior quality and safer for themselves and for the environment. Businesses, both large and small, are obliging with an ever-expanding selection of products catering to this new eco-sensibility. In addition to fattening their bottom lines by providing a competitive edge with this growing number of green consumers, environmental performance has become a point of social responsibility for many corporations. However, as green moves beyond niche market status and becomes the color of choice for mass merchandisers, not all products and companies are as environmentally responsible as they advertise themselves to be. Hence, the term “greenwashing,” which was coined as far back as the 1970s by environmental activists to describe advertising by corporations meant to portray them as environmentally responsible in order to mask environmental wrongdoings. The U.S.-based watchdog group CorpWatch defines greenwash as “the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment.” Former Madison Avenue advertising executive Jerry Mander (best known for his 1977 book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television ) called it “ecopornography” in a 1972 article in Communications and Arts Magazine. The term “greenwashing” is now used to describe a wide range of attempts by businesses to attract environmentally aware consumers, including the creation of organizations, celebrity endorsements, event sponsorship and the use of meaningless and unverifiable words like “natural,” “green,” “eco-friendly,” “non-toxic and “chemical-free” on labels and packaging. Even the word “organic” is meaningless unless it is backed up by certification. To read the rest of this article, subscribe to Natural Life's digital edition, which includes access to this and other back issues. Author Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with over 30 years of experience. She has also authored nine books. Read her blog. |
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