LOS ANGELES — To Marina Meadows, green may be the new white.
When she goes shopping these days, Meadows is often overwhelmed by a bevy of products touted as green, from Earth-friendly dish soaps and bamboo-derived towels to eco-detergents and plant-based soda bottles.
But the Santa Monica, Calif., resident, 26, said that while she is willing to pay extra to help the environment, she’s often not sure how much of the labeling she should believe.
“Sometimes, I wonder if any of it’s really green or if it’s all a marketing scheme,” Meadows said.
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.
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,” said Scott McDougall, chief executive of eco-marketing company TerraChoice.
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, the company found.
Some efforts just seem a bit odd: Plastic Barbie dolls can now sport handbags and accessories made from recycled materials.
“Most companies are engaged in incremental tinkering — symbolic actions without any real substance,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International.
But no one can agree on what exactly makes a product green and therefore what exactly constitutes greenwashing.
As a result, federal regulators have had difficulty setting standards to regulate green labeling. The Federal Trade Commission has a voluntary guideline for eco-advertising, but it is 20 years old. It is being updated.
According to a recent survey, 65 percent of consumers want a single seal identifying a green product, similar to the way beef is labeled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But for now, there’s a swarm of companies that issue green certification, endorsements and labels for a fee.
It can be a tricky call for consumers, who are regularly met by a vast array of vaguely defined green catchphrases such as “natural,” “clean” and “organic.” Even manufacturers often don’t know the difference between designations such as “compostable” and “biodegradable,” researchers said. “
