Environmental Claims

  • To meet consumer needs, marketers have significanly increased green advertising.
  • Not all environmental claims are truthful or valid.

Warning: Greenwash

  • verb: the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the enviornmental benefits of a product or service.

Greenwashing Risks

  • Consumers with the best intentions will be mislead into purchases that do not deliver on their claim.
  • Illegitimate claims will take away from those that are legitimate and slow innovation.
  • Consumer cynicism and doubt about environmental claims will increase
  • The sustainability movement and progress will lose momentum.
  • More information about Greenwashing

Seven Sins of Greenwashing

  1. Irrelevance
    • Environmental claims that may be truthful but is unimportant or unhelpful.
    • How to avoid:
      • Don't claim unless it's a legitimate point of competitive differentiation.
      • Don't claim environmental benefits shared by all/most of the competition.
  2. Fibbing
    • Making environmental claims that are simply false.
    • How to avoid:
      • Tell the truth.
  3. Lesser of Two Evils
    • Environmental claims that may be true within the product category, but risk distracting the consumer from greater environmental impacts.
    • How to avoid:
      • Help consumers find the right product based upon needs and wants.
      • Don't make consumers feel green about choices that are harmful or unnecessary.
  4. No Proof
    • Environmental claims that are not substantiated by easily accessible supporting information or by a reliable third-party certification.
    • How to avoid:
      • Understand and confirm scientific case behind environmental claim.
      • Make evidence readily avaliable, or rely on third-party certifications whose standards are publically avaliable.
  5. Hidden Trade Off
    • Suggesting a product is green based upon an unreasonably narrow set of attributes without attention given to other important environmental issues.
    • How to avoid:
      • Understand environmental impacts of product lifecycle.
      • Emphasize specific environmental issues and don't distract from others.
      • When making claims about a single environmental impact or benefit, understand how the product/service performs in relation to other impacts.
  6. Vagueness
    • Environmental claims that are poorly defined or broad so that the real meaning is misunderstood.
    • How to avoid:
      • Use language that resonates with consumers while maintaining honesty.
      • Provide detailed explanations and meaning of vague names and terms.
  7. False Labels
    • A product that, through either words or images, gives the impression of third-party endorsement when one doesn't exist.
    • How to avoid:
      • Communicate only valid third-party endorsements for environmental claims.
      • Favor accredited eco-labels that address product lifecycle.

Eco-Labels

  • Validity of the standard
    • Clear, consistent meaning, specific, verifiable, does not conflict with FTC Green Guides for Environmental Marketing Claims
  • Standard setting process
    • No conflict of interest, lifecycle considerations, broad stakeholder participation, transparent development process, comments publicly available.
  • Verification of the process.
    • Verification: There are many tiers. Self-certification (not ideal, not verifiable, self-interest or conflict of interest), self-certification with random audits, Independent third party certification, Independent third party verification with on-site audits.

Electronic Waste

Electronics contain valuable metals and components that can be used again in another manufacturing process.

Cadmium, hexavalent chromium, mercury, chromium, barium, beryllium and brominated flame-retardant materials are components that can pollute water and air resources without proper disposal or recycling. E-waste did not even exist as a waste stream in 1989 and now it's one of the largest and growing exponentially. — Katharina Kummer Peiry, Executive Secretary, Basel Convention Excerpts from Basel Convention November 2009 Press Advisory:

“Hazardous waste is threatening human health and the environment globally. Much of it is being exported to other countries, often to developing nations.”

One of the fastest growing [hazardous] waste streams is e-waste such as computers, television sets and mobile cell phones.

When e-waste crosses borders illegally and is indiscriminately dumped, or dismantled in unsound conditions, serious damage to human health and pollution of water, air and soil is often the result.

Electronic waste is a direct consequence of our ongoing desire to communicate from anywhere, connect more often and compute from home, office or on the road. Add an increasing demand for electronic gaming, higher definition televisions or smart cars and the result is a catastrophic accumulation of e-waste, now and into the future. An ongoing effort to address this exponentially growing problem is essential.

Montana does not have legislation requiring electronic equipment be recycled or banning electronics from landfills. Due to Montana's distance from most markets for recyclables, it may not be in the state's best interests to ban materials from landfills until reliable markets have been established for those materials.

 Useful Resources

 

Presentation created by Heather Higinbotham Davies

Heather.Higinbotham@gmail.com (406) 600-6617

www.stopwastingstuff.com

Download the presentation (powerpoint .pdf)