Greenwashing

Recently at university I learnt about the concept 'Greenwashing'. This is when a company claims to be environmentally friendly to improve their business image of their brand but they are misleading consumers. It has been found that 95% of products claiming to be 'green' had actually committed at least 1 negative environmental impact. The average person is finding it extremely difficult to tell which companies are actually helping the environment and those who are not.

Image from: <http://www.futurelab.net/blogs/marketing-strategy-innovation/2008/07/how_bad_is_greenwashing_really.html>

To help you when choosing products at the shops, here is a small picture of companies who 'Greenwash' their customers and we should aim to avoid them:

Image from: <http://www.guypearse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/UQ-GCI-Greenwash-Launch-with-slides-11-Oct-2012.pdf>

So some of your favourite companies who claim to be green are likely not, keep an eye out next time your buying something and maybe do some research to figure out who is genuinely trying to improve our future and who is trying to make a big profit.

Until next time,

Keep loving the green life