Many people are often posed with the question as to what is green washing. Well greenwashing is marketing, promotion and selling of a product under the tag of being ‘eco-friendly’. This amounts to misleading as products are pushed out as naturally made products without any trace of synthetic elements and users often buy these in the hope of making a contribution towards the environment. So how do you determine whether a particular product is green or greenwashed?
- Check the product ingredients
The best way to check for the eco-friendliness of a product is by checking for the ingredients. If the ingredients show up names of chemicals, then it can be safely assumed that the product is greenwashed.
In other cases, greenwashing may also be done by just camouflaging. The impact of products such as bulbs and tubes, which are touted to be energy saving; is often significantly hard on the environment. Thus, it is important to ensure that you weigh up the ingredients and entire product before arriving at a conclusion on whether it is greenwashed or green.
- Sense it with the tagline
Many a times, companies market their particular products by excessively using taglines such as ‘100% green’, ‘all natural’, ‘no trace of synthetic chemicals’. It is important to pay special attention to such products and more often than not, they turn out to be greenwashed.
- Certification of products
Products that are green need to be certified in order to be actually considered green. Many agencies in countries provide trusted certification on items, to ensure that they are green. If the so called green item does not contain certification of any kind; chances are it maybe greenwashed.
- Product types
It is important to know the type of product you opt for and you can certainly make a certain assumption in this case. Cleansing products and cosmetics are most likely to be greenwashed in case they claim to be green. Such products often use complex chemicals for achieving the desired effect and hence, chances of such products being green are minimal in most cases. It is important to have a quick look at the ingredients in case of such products to obtain a better idea about the eco-friendliness of these products.
Internet has emerged as an effective place for people to search information about various green and greenwashed products. To check for a particular product, you can search on the internet and ascertain whether the product is actually green or greenwashed.
