True Confessions of an Eco-Entrepreneur - The High Margin of Deceit - Four Winds Healthy Home Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning

The Green Shame.  A study by Terra Choice, conducted in 2007, was featured on the GreenBiz.com website made the following claim - .05% or 1 in 1753 green marketing claims were true, the rest were found to be false or misleading.

What does this mean for the well intentioned consumer, the companies that are involved in this high margin of deceit, and the companies who are telling the truth? In a nutshell, since that study was published,  more watchdog agencies, conventional and eco-repsonsible, have been keeping their eyes open and their attorneys busy in 2008.  Not bad for just the fifth month of the year.

Volkswagon, Toyota, British Petroleum among others have received backlash financially and otherwise from various international news agencies, such as The Wall Street Journal and The British Financial Times, for misleading and overstated green claims.

Recently many small and medium sized eco-friendly companies producing body care and cleaning products have been scandalized by the study conducted by Organic Consumers Association.  Various cancer causing agents that have no place in conventional products were found in many so called green products. Some companies claim that it was unintentional and was a by-product of a contaminated detergent softening process.  To make matters worse, many of these carcinogenic agents were also not disclosed on the Material Safety Data Sheets issued by the offending companies.

The moral and the hope of the story is read the ingredients, always.  If you can not pronounce them,  or if they end in -oxide, -iazide - iane  - ulfate  - exene - you know it is most likely a chemical based product, not a  truly plant based quality product.  Another  indicator is examine how eco-resposnible,  green prinicples flow through the firm's entire business identity.  If  there is just a green word or mention here, or a green SEO tag there, or only a pretty picture of nature, chances are, they are jumping on the green band wagon for profit only.

http://www.greenBiz.com        http://www.organicconsumers.org