Looks Green, Smells Green, But...

It looks like truth in advertising and green claims will become a ubiquitous part of our ever more complicated consumer panorama. Who is telling the "truth" when it comes to ingredients, practices and so on and so forth?!?

An article in the NY Times today focuses attention on the increasing green claims and the subsequent increasing greenwash claims that are following in their wake. Take a look at the article and tell us at Visionary Values what YOU think? Can these businesses & industries self-regulate or must they be strictly regulated by the government? Do YOU believe that consumers should or must play a role in this regulation?

We at Visionary Values believe that educated and informed customers are THE key part of this regulation. After all, if customers apply a socially and environmentally conscious set of criteria to their purchases, companies which do not fit the bill will not be able to maintain shelf space. Think about it!

An on with the story:

GREEN INC. COLUMN

Of 'Greenwash' and Image Management

But in a world growing weary of greenwash, reputation management would seem, asnever before, to be cutting both ways — particularly as environmental groups nurture ever-closer relationships with the businesses whose behavior they seek to improve.

To be sure, corporate greenwash is an increasingly contentious topic around the globe — and it has moved far beyond the regulation of patently false claims.

Late last month, for example, the Committee of Advertising Practice in Britain, the industry's self-regulating body, proposed stiff new rules for environmental advertising on television, including a requirement that eco-friendly claims should attach to the entire life cycle of a product — from raw material harvesting to factory and on to landfill.

In Australia, a similar industry body — the Australian Association of National Advertisers — issued new codes of its own last week.

Of particular interest in the rule-tightening was the use of vague and ultimately meaningless vernal imagery to imply "greenness."

Meanwhile, in the United States, the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus said it was seeing a marked increase in arbitration cases dealing with green claims of one kind or another.

"It's not merely a case of companies trying to 'greenwash' — although that certainly exists," David Mallen, associate director for N.A.D., said in an e-mail message last week. "There is also genuine confusion in the marketplace about how consumers understand these claims and the appropriate means for substantiating them. Here, industry self-regulation plays a vital role."

Of course, environmental advocates have long argued that self-regulation is an oxymoron. And while government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission in the United States can and do step in on some patently false environmental claims, they are increasingly faced with a murky sort of "truthiness," to borrow a term, in green marketing.

What to do, after all, when a company exploits a minor but true green data point to the exclusion of its larger environmental record, or peddles meaningless green images and aphorisms?

Link to the article at: www.nytimes.com