The sudden boom in health and environmental consciousness has pressured companies to make more sustainable and natural products. The appeal of the words “all-natural” and “recycled material” scrawled across cleanly designed packaging is certainly attractive, but sometimes the claims aren’t true.

The term “all-natural” on a product would usually indicate an option healthier than its counterparts. However, consumers have come to find that the term does not necessarily mean the same thing across all food companies. Many companies use it to their own liking to denote whatever they consider as natural, even if only a few components truly are. However, even experts consider the word too poorly defined to prove most companies as unjustified in using it on their products. Still, consumers who find discrepancies between the health claims and the actual ingredients accuse companies of greenwashing.

According to a 2010 report from TerraChoice, 95% of supposedly “green” products in 2010 were greenwashed, or made to seem more environmentally sustainable than they really were. Recently, Coca-Cola was accused of greenwashing the marketing for their new PlantBottle packaging, which has been introduced in the Western U.S. and Canada. The similarity between their circular PlantBottle logo and the recyclability symbol has been criticized as being misleading. According to Coke, the bottle uses up to 15% of plant-based material to produce monoethylene glycol for its PET plastic bottles, which Danish consumer ombudsperson Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe states as an unjustifiable percentage for the name “PlantBottle”. The Danish environmental group Forest of the World also asserted that Coke has no evidence that its materials help reduce carbon emissions. Despite critics who say that Coke is trying to win over environmentally conscious consumers for profit with greenwashing, Coke has defended its PlantBottle packaging.