Green Marketers Are Still Sinning

[Renew Deal]

The green marketing research firm Terrachoice released its annual "Sins of Greenwashing" study on Tuesday. I got a sneak peak on Monday and spoke with Scot Case, one of the key execs behind the report.

For the past few years, this study has been one of my favorite reviews of the pitfalls of green marketing. It's always a clever piece of analysis based on painstakingly assembled data about thousands of consumer products. This time their researchers explored 34 stores in Canada and the U.S. (from chains that have over 40,000 locations) and looked for any product that made a green claim — all while managing not to get arrested as they trolled store aisles for hours. They then counted how many products made any of seven mistakes, or "sins," that Terrachoice has previously identified.

Check out the report (page 10) for the exact definitions of the Seven Sins, but they include making claims that are vague ("all-natural"), having no proof (from, say, third-party certification), or stating irrelevant details (such as "CFC-free" on aerosol cans —the substance has been banned for 30 years).

This year's report is very well timed. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission just proposed http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/10/greenguide.shtm">changing its Green Guidelines, the standards for what marketers can legally say. The new, stricter rules are http://www.ftc.gov/os/2010/10/101006greenguidesproposal.pdf">open for public comment (PDF) now. I'll be keeping a close eye on that story, but in the meantime I'll point out what I see as the key findings of the report. This report houses some of the best data on what marketers are trying to do and the pitfalls you should avoid. Here are the big picture findings:
<snip>

http://blogs.hbr.org/winston/2010/10/green-marketers-are-still-sinn.html

Link to report: http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/?dl_id=102

http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/findings/greenwashing-report-2010

[veganlush]

1. awesome information

thanks for posting.