Going green is an initiative that most businesses are trying to achieve as there is a market segmentation and trend for green products and services. However, attempting to be sustainable and maximizing profits is a difficult balance. Hence businesses have resorted to “greenwashing” unfortunately. According to Sins of Greenwashing, greenwashing is “the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.” In Metro’s article, “95.6% of all “green” consumer products make at least one dubious claim about their environmental purity.” This means that 4.4% of the other products that are labelled “green” are genuinely green. The majority of those products are just plastered with a fake label that embellishes green.
Businesses who resort to greenwashing are participating in unethical activities. Not only is it unethical in terms of pulling a hoax on consumers, it also promotes other businesses to engage in these unprincipled activities. Businesses who are struggling to add some eco-friendliness to their product may be influenced by these businesses who took the easy, but fictitious way of being green. As consumers, we have to be careful in choosing green products as only 4.4% of them are truly reliable.
Sources:
Sins of Greenwashing
Vancouver Metro: Dirty Business of “Greenwashing” (Wednesday, October 27, 2010)