Listen to an excellent NPR audiocast:

America’s store shelves are filled with products claiming to be good for the environment. Everything from shampoos and cleaning agents to granola bars claim to be “natural” and “earth friendly.” But some environmentalists think you’re being “greenwashed.”

One of them is Scot Case, with the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice.

The firm says it found 1,018 products that made environmental claims, ranging from toothpaste to office paper, on retail shelves of six big-box retailers.

“When we dug a little deeper, we were actually shocked to discover that all but one were committing what we’re now calling one of the Six Sins of Greenwashing,” Case tells Steve Inskeep. …

NPR : Eco-Friendly Product Claims Often Misleading

From reading this blog you might think I am anti-Green. My pockets lined by polluting big business.

Actually, I am anti-BS.

“Green products” are mostly theatre and marketing. Companies taking advantage of consumers gullible enough to pay a mark-up for any green label.

1. The Sin of the Hidden Tradeoff … a product is “green” based on a single environmental attribute … without attention to other important environmental issues

2. The Sin of No Proof.

3. The Sin of Vagueness …

4. The Sin of Irrelevance is committed by making an environmental claim that may be truthful but is unimportant and unhelpful …

5. The Sin of Lesser of Two Evils.

6. The Sin of Fibbing is committed by making environmental claims that are simply false.

Six Sins