When shopping around for “green” products this Thanksgiving, don’t be impressed by logos plastered with happy plants and animals. Companies have realized the benefits of marketing their products as “eco-friendly,” even if the manufacturers are still destroying the earth. The eco-marketing firm Terra Choice tested 1,018 different products from big box stores, claiming 1,753 different environmental benefits, and found that all but one of the products made dubious environmental promises. The organization identified “the six sins of greenwashing,” that marketers use to obfuscate their less-than-pristine environmental records. Sins included “the sin of irrelevance,” when the eco-benefits were pointless, like shoes claim to be CFC-free, and the “sin of fibbing,” when companies claim an organic certification they don’t actually have.
—Bennett Gordon
