I just learned the term “greenwashing”. Jim Nicolow says it best:

Greenwashing is a symptom of the business community’s recognition that the public is demanding that they do better, and prepared to reward those that do. The quickest response is simply to re-brand / spin your company to make it look greener (greenwash). Lovins cites General Electric’s “ecomagination” ad campaign as an example of profound greenwashing, with GE basically taking their existing products and slapping an ‘eco’ label on them (remember the dancing elephant?).

There are tons of examples of greenwashing. I think every corporation is guilty of greenwashing, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with it if it can lead to actual sustainable practices.

Wal*Mart comes to mind as a good example. They have been greenwashing their corporate image for some time now. Their green marketing campaign uses some fuzzy logic: ‘If every Wal*Mart shopper, all 250 million of us, gets these great organic pajamas, we will prevent hundreds of thousands pounds of pesticides from polluting our waters’.

Well that is assuming, Wal*Mart, that you stop selling the NON-organic pajamas and everyone who was in the market for pajamas buys your organic pajamas. I don’t need pajamas, I’m not a kid nor an octogenarian. I am not going to buy something because it’s green, I’m going to buy something because it’s green and I need it. <end rant>

But check out The Greenwash Brigade by American Public Media. It’s chock full of goodness.

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