Producing environmentally friendly is becoming more and more important. On one hand because your image is a lot better and on the other hand because you get all kinds of benefices from governments etc. Industry has polluted air and water (nature in general) for a long time, every one agrees it’s about time for some changes.
A new trend nowadays is ‘greenwashing’. Everyone knows what whitewashing is; hiding unpleasant facts. Greenwashing is faking that your products and policies are environmentally friendly. Companies pretend using green resources for example. When a company is advertising its green ideas more than actually doing something useful for the planet, the company is greenwashing.
We, as consumers, don’t know much about the green labels. It’s easy to trick us. The sad thing is that because of this greenwashing trend we don’t trust the companies that actually are taking care of nature. It’s up to the government and these brands to inform customers about green labels so that we know what companies are faking it.
On the website ‘greenwashing index’ you can help as consumer as well. You can post advertisements and let people rate it. The companies are getting a ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘thumbs down’. The site exists to make sure you don’t get lured. They want to keep advertising honest. Consumers would do the exact opposite thing of helping the environment without noticing it.
A new trend nowadays is ‘greenwashing’. Everyone knows what whitewashing is; hiding unpleasant facts. Greenwashing is faking that your products and policies are environmentally friendly. Companies pretend using green resources for example. When a company is advertising its green ideas more than actually doing something useful for the planet, the company is greenwashing.
We, as consumers, don’t know much about the green labels. It’s easy to trick us. The sad thing is that because of this greenwashing trend we don’t trust the companies that actually are taking care of nature. It’s up to the government and these brands to inform customers about green labels so that we know what companies are faking it.
On the website ‘greenwashing index’ you can help as consumer as well. You can post advertisements and let people rate it. The companies are getting a ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘thumbs down’. The site exists to make sure you don’t get lured. They want to keep advertising honest. Consumers would do the exact opposite thing of helping the environment without noticing it.
Sources I used:
· http://www.marketingprofs.com/9/green-marketing-claims-whom-do-you-trust-ottman.asp
· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
· http://www.greenwashingindex.com
Bye
Laurens