If you’re like me, you’ve probably fooled by greenwashing before: when you’re strolling through the aisles of your local market, your eye jumps to green-colored packaging, and to marketing buzzwords like ‘recycled’, ‘natural’, or ‘organic’. We’re told the best way to help the environment is by being eco-friendly consumers, so when we’re given a choice between products, our instinct is often to lean towards the one that seems the most green. But it’s important to stay vigilant, critical & conscious in our consumption practices.

Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the trend to shop “green”, and their PR teams take advantage of it through “green washing” – deceptively branding themselves as environmentally friendly, despite the amount of harmful chemicals contained in the products or the carbon footprint of their manufacturing and distribution practices. Many of these companies spend more on their marketing campaigns than on actually striving to make their companies less harmful to the environment. If you care about living in an eco-friendly way, here are some tips to help you see through all this false advertising.

Consider the packaging

Some companies boast about their 100% recycled packaging, but what about the ingredients or materials contained in the product itself? Alternatively, the product could be quite earth-friendly but is packaged in plastic and is effectively un-friendly to the environment. You must consider all parts of the product you are buying, as well as the means of production and distribution. Just because one aspect of it is green or recyclable does not make the entire product eco-friendly.

Watch out for buzzwords

‘Organic’, ‘natural’, ‘green’, ‘earth-friendly’, ‘low-impact’, ‘low emissions’ — all sound good in theory, but most of these words can be used without threat of legal repercussion, rendering them pretty meaningless without more information and context to back them up. Even things claiming to be 100% natural can practically have anything inside. Likewise, things that claim to be organic often only have a small fraction of their product that is truly organic. That’s why it’s important to know what certain certifications mean and to check the fine print.

Always do more research

The internet is the best tool you can use to really get the facts about a product and the company’s practices. Just google “product name greenwashing” and you will likely find discussions on forums or blog posts detailing the true eco-friendliness rating of any given product. Any claims of special certification, or associated programs of giving back to the environment in some way, should always be looked into. You truly cannot trust what you read on the packaging until you dig deeper.

So do your homework and shop from brands you know you can trust, but at the end of the day, don’t be too hard on yourself. As Kermit the frog once said, “It’s not easy being green” — so we all just have to do the best we can. 🙂