Cleansing Blog

I’m making my holiday gift list, and I’m checking it twice. Especially since, this year, it is so much easier to find eco-friendly goodies out there to give.

At the same time, I’m trying to wade through the hype to assess whether a potential gift is as eco-friendly as it’s marketed to be.

For example, there are now plenty of organic bath and beauty products that would be perfect for a friend. But often their ingredients sound less than all-natural to me.

I found some gorgeous gift wrap that comes from “sustainable forestry practices.” Should I keep shopping for gift wrap made from recycled paper? Should I use brown paper bags?

I’m not the only one who’s confused by the eco-chatter. A friend mentioned that when he was wandering near some plasma TVs at an electronics store, a salesman told him that it’d be green to get a pre-owned, refurbished plasma screen.

The truth is, my guard has been up since I read an article in The New York Times alerting consumers that green marketing is one of the season’s biggest retail trends, and that the claims often fall short.

A report by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing offers guidelines for shoppers, asking us to be mindful of the Six Sins of Greenwashing. Here are the six marketing ploys to keep in mind:

• The Sin of the Hidden Trade-off (A refurbished plasma TV might reduce the need for materials at first, but plasma screens are energy hogs.)
• The Sin of the No Proof (Can a third party verify claims such as “organic” or “all-natural?)
• The Sin of Vagueness (Beware of products claiming to be chemical-free or all-natural)
• The Sin of Irrelavance (Claims that have no relationship to the product or can be made with any other product in the same category—such as CFC-free shaving gel)
• The Sin of Fibbing (a falsehood that can’t be backed up at all, such as “certified organic” when no such certification exists)
• The Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils (an attempt put a green twist on a product that’s inherently harmful to the environment—e.g., organic cigarettes)

going green