Green Up

Increase Indoor Air Quality – less allergies, less headaches, less breathing problems, less lethargy.
Increase heating and cooling efficiencies
Increase feelings of good health
Increase your own pride in doing the right thing for your family and the planet, AND SAVE MONEY TOO!
Increase your validity when selling your home, going green is a selling point.
 
Decrease you utility bills, garbage fees, costs of maintenance, plumbing repair, grocery bills = especially cleaning products

10 ways a product or service is Greenwashed:

1- Green Misdirection:  Ignore the real issue and divert attention to the “other things”.  For example, Fiji bottled water operates out of a LEED silver certified building, though they transport the water more than 4000 to the US and Canada, put it in plastic bottles, and ship it again throughout the country.

2- Green by Proxy:  Do what Clorox did, since bleach is not a Green product, they bought out Greenworks and now they hail their Green contribution.  Green by Proxy is buying someone else’s Green solution without really changing the way you operate.

3- The Green Dumb Down:  Why not produce the very same product that has been diluted or slightly altered and slap a Green label on it?   Dilution of harmful ingredients does not make a product Green.

4- Charitably Green:  Tout the fact that a few pennies from every purchase (of an otherwise non-Green product) will be given to a Green charity.

5- Token Green:  This process is defined as doing the minimum that can be done to make something Green.  So, a hotel can put in CFL bulbs and declare that they are Green although there is so much more than could and
should be done.

6- Green by Discovery:  No change is required with this method.  The company discovers that there is already something Green about their product or service.  There is no Green commitment except for the realization that they tripped over an idea already in existence.

7- Green Pretenders:  There are more than a few products that blatantly misrepresent the products by poor labeling or to confuse the buyers to produce sales, even though the product is not Green by any reasonable standard.

8- Radically Green:  Some Green products are sold just for the environmental ‘wackos’ (sorry, but its true).  The over hype is not on the product, but on the necessity to buy the product.

9- Mean Green:  Hate runs two ways.  Villianizing the opposition (like the Mac v PC commercials) where the purpose is to denigrate the competition to make their own  product seem better.

10- Meaningless Green:  Some Green claims are not relevant to the subject.  So, does it matter that the package says, “No Heavy Metals,” “CFC-free,” or “No Bleach Added”?  These ingredients are either already banned or may mask other ingredient still in the product.
When a project called TerraChoice did a survey of 1018 products making 1753 environmental claims, they found that only one product made truthful claims.  The rest fudged, lied, and deceived the public with one or more of their environmental claims.
There is simply a lot of room to fuel the Greenwashing mania.