Marketplace

On how to find green cleaning, not green washing

I came across this 6-minute video on how to identify and avoid greenwashing when buying cleaning products or hiring someone to clean your home. The carpet cleaning blog where I found it seems, uh, rather informally managed, but the info appears generally reliable.

It’s really a Maid Brigade commercial embedded in the video, but the advice is sound, and if you skip the last 45 seconds, you miss most of the commercial. I like the five questions (opens PDF) to ask when hiring a cleaning services - although #5 is for those seeking perfection.

Personally, I prefer to hire locally, to keep the money in my local economy, to ensure whoever cleans my home has reasonable control over his/her hours and working conditions. Plus, I’m happy to help share green cleaning along the way - expanding the number of green cleaning services available in my community.

• January 6, 2009 by Janne K. Flisrand
• 3 comments

• tags: cleaning products services

Start 2009 with Heidi's consumer resources list

Heidi’s consumer product posts have always generated discussion among Greenwash Brigade readers. Start 2009 with a list of Heidi’s favorite consumer resource sites. Enjoy, and happy new year!

Vehicles

• Greener Cars: http://www.greenercars.org. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy put together this site — all energy, all the time.

Personal Care Products (shampoos, cosmetics, deodorants)

• The Environmental Working Group runs the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ site, which contains a searchable database called the SkinDeep database. The EWG spent over a decade compiling this rigorous database on all things slick and pretty- this is a particularly important site for parents choosing products for babies and growing children.

Food

• The Organic Consumers Association has a drop-down menu so you can find local food groups in your state.
• the Chefs Collaborative is an organization of smart, yummy and ecologically sound chefs and foodies — they first brought contextual farming issues to the table for chefs on a national basis. (Disclaimer: Siegelbaum is a member of the Chefs Collaborative.)
• The Healthy Eating Advisor is a balanced nutrition and healthy eating site.
• The Food Alliance offers ecolabels for food, including the unexpected!
• Buy local food from your farmer’s markets when you can, and organic if possible.
• Environmental Working Group’s Food News has information on which foods contain the most and least pesticides. Don’t miss the easy-to-download wallet guide to pesticides.

Toys

• Healthy Toys is a relatively new site. Many toys are laden with lead and other toxics that will wreak havoc on your kid’s development — 2009 is the perfect time to return your toxic baddies!

Energy Issues

• This PDF on carbon offset programs lists the programs where you can buy carbon offsets — though they’re fraught with difficulties in choosing wisely.
• Buying renewable energy: http://www.green-e.org
• Appliances: Energy Star®

Electronics

• Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT® is a program of the Green Electronics Council. Although not applicable to all electronics, it provides easy-to-download information on monitors, laptops and notebooks and is being used by many cities and states to help green their computer purchases.
• Responsible End of Life for electronics at computertakeback.org: Be smart about exiting your electronics — this site offers tips on putting your computer to rest responsibly.

Healthy Indoor Decor

• Many indoor products contain toxics that can trigger asthma, allergic reactions and are developmental or neurotoxins. Never use fragrances to mask odors. http://www.greenguard.org.
• Avoid any consumer product that is labeled with “perfume” or “parfum.”

Cleaning Products

Put your faith in non-profit and government sites that provide 3rd party certification for products. Although not always air-tight, they are almost always better than company-generated eco-claims.

• EcoLogo
• EPA’s Database
• Women’s Voices of the Earth shows you how to make your own great cleaners — a fun project with kids.
• GreenSeal®
• Don’t assume because a non-profit logo is on a product it’s safer or greener.

(Disclaimer: Siegelbaum is involved in chemical policy through a chemical policy planning committee by the Product Stewardship Institute and the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association.)

• January 2, 2009 by Jo Easton
• 1 comments

• tags: consumer resources

"Go green" goes down -- send greenwashing with it

Sustainable Industries predicts that in 2009, going green will go down — because everyone’s done it. Thanks to its prevalence, it’s harder for companies to get noticed when they do something green, and consumers have become more “mature” about greenwashing. Now, an “authentic story” is key.

I hope they’re right - I’m sick of everyone “going green.” Give me authenticity!

Those of us on the Greenwash Brigade go on and on about standards, and here I go again.

Business leaders, I ask for carbon footprint labeling on every item you sell!

The UK already has almost two years’ experience with carbon footprint labeling, thanks to Carbon Trust. The label “shows the total greenhouse gas emissions from every stage of the product’s lifecycle,” including production, transportation, preparation, use and disposal. Is it perfect? Probably not - but it gives consumers a yardstick to compare products when shopping.

Plus, it’s cute. I might buy even a pair of socks just because of the cute foot on the tag. Or a t-shirt with the label printed on the front.

Readers - what do you want businesses to do to send greenwashing down?

• January 7, 2009 by Janne K. Flisrand
• 7 comments

• tags: certifications

99% natural and 42% market share, GreenWorks flexes its muscle

Greenworks (tm) cleaning products have now captured a robust 42% of the consumer cleaning products market despite consternation over Clorox’s takeover of Burt’s Bees and the introduction of this product line alongside the company’s traditional products. Clorox is associating itself with progressive causes and organizations and it has a winner of a product — but it has a long way to go.

It’s hard to be upset about this story, albeit the cause marketing aspect, in which the Sierra Club logo now appears on this product line, gifting the non-profit over $470,000 from eight months of sales and which caused widespread ire within its ranks. In fact, it even led to a can of whoop—s delivered to its now defunct Florida Chapter whose ire was just too much for the Sierra Club to endure for this much money. The chapter is poof… gone.

This is an encouraging product line development story: big cozy, recognizable name with market credibility (not sure if I get the fuzzies), partners with sexy recognizable non-profit to develop environmentally-preferable cleaning products for a reasonable price. Who could argue with this? Some detractors may find fault with:

• Clorox slow to come to sustainability table (well, wait your place in line?);
• Clorox still carries a stable of products made from petroleum based synthetic products with no labeling;
• Clorox is working to create its own “natural” definition in the vacuum created by Federal regulators’ failure to create one first; and
• Through its affiliation with the American Chemistry Council, Clorox may be (though I’m not sure) thwarting efforts at credible US federal chemical policy reform.

The company insinuated that other green cleaning products were not efficacious and claimed the Greenworks products were “the only natural cleaning products that have been proven to clean as well as conventional cleaners on most soils.” Well, you know the litigation guy came-a-knockin’ on that one and Clorox lost on that unsupported claim which it had to withdraw.

I think we hate big — we want to root for the small guy and we want to see the whole company risen to meet the standards of newly introduced green products. For better or worse, Clorox then introduced another EPA Design for Environment (DfE) product, its biodegradable cleaning wipes.

Just get a rag and wash it rather than contributing to our national fiesta of waste. The last time I saw a landfilled product claim biodegradation, the generally reticent Federal Trade Commission walloped the makers of Glad bags for making that claim under its so-called Green Guide. You will just have to decide what kind of product — and company — you want to vote your dollars with.

• January 23, 2009 by Heidi Siegelbaum
• 0 comments

• tags: Clorox

Making green sexy?

Here at the Greenwash Brigade, we recently received a press release titled “Making Green Sexy,” about a LEED certified mega mansion in Florida called Acqua Liana.

The average American home, which has more than doubled in size since the 1950’s, is now about 2,500 square feet, with the median home price just over $200,000 (opens PDF). At 15,000 square feet and $29 million, the 11-bath ‘green’ megamansion is 6-times larger than an average new home, and nearly 150-times more expensive.

Some of Acqua Liana’s features are legitimately more environmentally preferable than what one might find on a typical 15,000 square foot home, if there is such a thing. It has a solar system large enough to cover a “regulation-sized basket ball court.” The website indicates that the solar array generates enough electricity to run 2 average sized homes, but not enough to power the megamansion. And the release touts the 10.5 acres of Brazilian rainforest ‘saved’ through the use of reclaimed wood.

But can any house using more than twice the electricity of an average home or consuming 10.5 acres of wood (sustainably harvested or not) really be called ‘green’?

To apply a tortured analogy, this feels a bit like the school bully asking for pacifist credentials because he hit you fewer times than he could have. “Hey, I ‘saved’ you from being hit a few times! Butch would have hit you 6 times, but I only hit you 3 times. That’s a 50% reduction from conventional practice. Let’s celebrate my pacifism!”

Maybe the “waterfall spa with fire feature” and the “arched aquarium wet bar (walk below with exotic fish above!)” will indeed help to make green sexy, as the press release suggests. But this smells more like an attempt to assuage the potential buyer’s guilt over such conspicuous consumption in an age where that has clearly gone out of fashion.

Making green sexy? This feels more like making obesity sexy.

• January 26, 2009 by Jim Nicolow
• 0 comments

• tags: Acqua Liana Frank McKinney green building LEED megamansion reclaimed wood