The Sins of Greenwashing and How to Avoid Them | with Scot Case

<p>Being a sustainable consumer is hard. What's with all these products claiming to be "all natural" and "100% sustainable"? Who do we even believe? With sustainability being a more important factor that consumers take into consideration when shopping, companies are engaging in <em>greenwashing</em>. In 2007, Terrachoice published a report titled "The Six Sins of Greenwashing", in which Scot Case was a lead author. The six sins are as follows:</p> <p>1) The Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off -- cool, this product uses recycled content! oh wait, the manufacturing process isn't that energy efficient... the marketing of this product <em>only</em> talks about the recycled content it uses, which paints a misleading picture.</p> <p>2) The Sin of No Proof -- companies can't claim that their product is "emissions-free" without any proof!</p> <p>3) The Sin of Vagueness -- what exactly does "environmentally friendly" mean? without anything to back that claim up, it really means nothing.</p> <p>4) The Sin of Irrelevance -- a CFC-free product! That would be cool, except it's irrelevant because CFCs have been banned for over 30 years already.</p> <p>5) The Sin of Less of Two Evils -- marketing a product as "green", but distracting the consumer from the greater environmental impacts of the product as a whole (eg. reduced methane beef, organic tobacco, etc.)</p> <p>6) Sin of Fibbing -- this is companies just straight up lying about their sustainability practices. not cool.</p> <p>Scot Case is vice president of corporate social responsibility and sustainability at the National Retail Federation. In this role, he leads <a href="https://nrf.com/about-us/committees-councils/sustainability-council">NRF’s Sustainability Council</a> and supports retailer efforts to use their businesses to make the world a better place for everyone.</p> <p>Case has focused on the intersection of business, environmental and social concerns since the mid-1990s. Throughout Case’s career as a strategist, consultant and sustainability expert, he has worked with or