Top 10 Greenwashing Campaigns of 2009 (PHOTOS)
According to
TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, only about 2 percent of products that are labeled "eco-friendly" are entirely truthful. The other 98 percent are guilty of greenwashing to some degree. Let's take a look at some of the worst cases of greenwashing in 2009.
In this gallery
File this one in the “localwashing” category. There’s no clear explanation for why Citgo launched this billboard campaign, which could be seen in Chicago this year, because there’s nothing local about buying gas from a Venezuelan oil company. 
This one deserves to be on the list for that picture alone. Maybe cooking the earth is the wrong message for a product that purports to be green. The only reason Traeger claims that their grills are green is that the bbq pellets are made from recycled sawdust; the grill itself has zero green cred. (Hat tip: The Greenwashing Blog)
The world’s largest beverage company did some pretty good things in 2009, unveiling a new bottle that’s made from plant-based material and pledging to waste less water. To celebrate those modest achievements, Coke launched a new ad campaign in Copenhagen last week, referring to itself as “a bottle of hope.” That pastoral scene emerging from the bottle might seem a bit more plausible if Coke weren't guilty of polluting the groundwater in India with toxic sludge. (Hat tip: Grist)
“We grow potatoes in Florida, and Lays makes potato chips in Florida,” says Florida farmer Steve Singleton in a recent TV ad for Lay’s potato chips. “It’s a pretty good fit.” Yeah, it’s a great fit if you live in Florida, but Lay’s chips are distributed all over the country, so the “local food” angle doesn’t really hold up. 
“Sustainability” is one of the most overused words in advertising, and no company abuses it more than Monsanto. The chemical and seed company claims that their pesticides and GE crops increase yields and are necessary to feed the world, but in reality, they produce herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds’ that require ever increasing amounts of herbicides.
This is a case of implied greenwashing. First, Dean Foods, the country’s biggest dairy company, switched several Horizon products from organic to “natural,” an unregulated term that doesn’t actually mean anything. Then, Dean didn’t inform major retailers of the switch, prompting Target and others to mislabel non-organic dairy products as organic. 
The German automaker got a lot of attention for this ad campaign, which claims that buying an Audi A3 diesel is actually good for the environment. Right, let’s just dump those barrels of oil back into the earth. The ads even imply that driving an Audi is akin to riding a bike. (Hat tip to It Grows on Trees)
It’s great that Nestle’s new water bottles use less plastic than the old ones, but that won’t matter if those bottles end up in landfills. The lighter bottle might distract consumers from the fact that bottled water is one of the most wasteful industries in the world. 
Microsoft’s new operating system has more energy-efficient settings than older versions, and Microsoft claims that those features make Windows 7 "green." However, most of the carbon footprint for a computer comes from manufacturing it, not running it. So the greenest option would be to keep running that old PC. 
The construction boom is long gone, but the trend of marketing new condo developments as "eco-friendly" is here to stay. Despite the stagnant housing market, real estate agents are still appealing to buyers' environmental conscience with frivolous "green" features, like the "green kiosks' in the above ad.
Citgo billboards
File this one in the “localwashing” category. There’s no clear explanation for why Citgo launched this billboard campaign, which could be seen in Chicago this year, because there’s nothing local about buying gas from a Venezuelan oil company.
Weird and fun stuff from all over:
1 Comment
Green Horn Chicago said:
Like "organic," "free-range," and the like, "green" or environmentally friendly" are such vague labels that have no specific definition. Hopefully, consumers won't mindlessly buy into marketing schemes that throw these words around without backing them up. The Federal Trade Commision has a helpful guide for sorting green claims on their website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/general/gen02.shtm
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