I spent much of my day today at Auburn University visiting with their Engineering Staff and hearing about some research on alternative fuels.  It was a great chance to see what technology is coming down the pipeline.  During his presentation, one of my former professors was venturing onto the topic of sustainability when he threw out the term “Greenwashing.”  I had a pretty good guess at what he was referring to.   A quick Google search confirmed my suspicions.

For a while, I have been trying to think of an expression for this exact concept, and now I had it.  If you notice the previous titles to your right, you see that I must keep my article names succinct (or else they jumble up the spacing), and my creative allusion to Kermit the Frog was not going to fit on one line.

Greenwashing, as defined by Wikipedia, “is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly.”  Or as I like to call it, “color fraud.”  The Susan G. Komen Foundation is familiar very familiar with this concept.

You might recall the thousands of pink ribbon adorned objects for sale in October, where many of them do absolutely nothing for the battle against Breast Cancer.  Greenwashing serves to similarly draw on the heartstrings of consumers and fool them into endorsing companies that do little or nothing for the environment.

As everyone is aware, being green is all the rage these days.  The problem, as with any marketing fad, is discerning who is for serious and who simply changed their color scheme. The challenge is being an informed consumer.  Take time to look at the facts.

Surrounding a product with healthy vegetation in a TV commercial does not make it beneficial for the environment.  A large SUV atop a mountain is no more in tune with nature than one that is inching through rush hour traffic.  Don’t be fooled by creative packaging and pretty pictures.

If you are employed at an organization that throws around the “Green” concept liberally, then hold your company responsible.  If the proof is not apparent, then ask your boss what is being done to support the image that is being purveyed.  I have run into this façade, as has my wife at in her job.  When all is said and done, is your business jumping on the promotional bandwagon, or are they really making an effort?

One of my goals from the outset of this site was to focus on being “Environmentally Conscious” and avoid any associations with the previously mentioned term.  This is partly in an attempt to dissociate from this growing trend and additionally to remove any ambiguity.  Our goal here at DoGoodedness is to provide reasonable and effective means of lessoning your environmental impact.

All being said, I am not here to rip someone a new one for changing the background on their website or redesigning their literature to look more more natural, but being “green” is simple.  We should hold ourselves to higher standards, and question the intentions of those who wear a false altruism.  Finding a new term wouldn’t hurt either…

Just keep Doing Good, and the world will be a better place for it!

Thanks,

Matt Chapman (or Chappy if we’re cool)