Harvard Business Review October 29, 2010, 11:35AM EST

Green Marketers Are Still Sinning

Harvard blogger Andrew Winston discusses the Sins of Green-Washing report's findings about lingering problems in the eco-friendly consumer products industry

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Posted on Harvard Business Review: October 28, 2010 11:54 AM

The green marketing research firm Terrachoice released its annual "Sins of Greenwashing" study on Tuesday. I got a sneak peak on Monday and spoke with Scot Case, one of the key execs behind the report.

For the past few years, this study has been one of my favorite reviews of the pitfalls of green marketing. It's always a clever piece of analysis based on painstakingly assembled data about thousands of consumer products. This time their researchers explored 34 stores in Canada and the U.S. (from chains that have over 40,000 locations) and looked for any product that made a green claim—all while managing not to get arrested as they trolled store aisles for hours. They then counted how many products made any of seven mistakes, or "sins," that Terrachoice has previously identified.

Check out the report (page 10) for the exact definitions of the Seven Sins, but they include making claims that are vague ("all-natural"), having no proof (from, say, third-party certification), or stating irrelevant details (such as "CFC-free" on aerosol cans —the substance has been banned for 30 years).

This year's report is very well timed. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission just proposed changing its Green Guidelines, the standards for what marketers can legally say. The new, stricter rules are open for public comment (PDF) now. I'll be keeping a close eye on that story, but in the meantime I'll point out what I see as the key findings of the report. This report houses some of the best data on what marketers are trying to do and the pitfalls you should avoid. Here are the big picture findings:

1. The number of products making some kind of green claim is rising fast.
This year, Terrachoice cataloged 5,296 products. In just the two dozen stores it visited both in 2009 and 2010, the number rose from about 2,700 to 4,700, a 73% increase. Given the economic climate, this increase is particularly impressive. Because greener products are often considered to be (or actually are) more expensive, marketers would be forgiven for avoiding that pitch in a recession. Clearly there's a belief that consumer interest is still rising. (Side note: The overall increase in green claims has not gone unnoticed by certification and safety giant Underwriters Laboratory, which bought Terrachoice this year to help round out its UL Environment business.)

2. The vast majority of products with green claims are still committing at least one "sin"
In the first report in 2007, literally one product avoided all the sins. Terrachoice tries to put a positive spin on the new data, which shows a moderate increase of "sin-free" marketing. But the percentage of products that are still sinning remains very high at 95%. This level of greenwash, no matter how minor, leaves companies wide open to significant risk in the marketplace.

3. The mix of sins committed is shifting, and the sin of "worshipping false labels" is on the rise.
An amazing 70% of these products now have no proof of their claims, and 31% go so far as to include some kind of label that looks like a third-party certification. As the report put it, "ease of access to false, completely meaningless eco-labels has become almost comical."