With booming interest in the environment, more companies are trying to cash in by promoting themselves and their products as green. But environmentalists and some consumers are crying foul, saying that many companies are making the products out to be greener than they really are, a practice they call greenwashing, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The term caught on when hotels began asking guests to reuse towels, saying they were trying to conserve water, though skeptics said it was really to skimp on laundry costs.
These days, greenwashing is reaching "epidemic proportions," according to advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, which has been pushing for accurate environmental marketing.
"If we allow companies to get away with exaggeration, consumer skepticism will become cynicism and they'll stop choosing green products at all," Scott McDougall, chief executive of eco-marketing company TerraChoice, said in the story.
Last year, TerraChoice counted 5,000 items in retail stores that claimed to be green, a 73-percent increase from the year before. But on every toy and 95 percent of home and family products, at least one eco-friendly claim turned out to be misleading or false.
For more information, see our Going Green at Home Research Center.
