Many 'green' products don't quite weigh up, study finds
Environmental marketing firm TerraChoice found that many retail products overstate their environmental attributes, a practice which risks causing skepticism among consumers.
The company sent people to big-box retail stores to find products labeled as green. In the process, it found that almost all of them committed at least one of what it calls "sins of greenwashing."
Most common was the "Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off," where manufacturers claim a product has a green feature, such as recycled paper content, but don't pay attention to potentially more important issues, such as global warming or water use. … Read more