How to make sure you are not tricked when you are trying to make a better choice.

Author: Maria-Antoanela Ioniță – Sustainability Communications Specialist

You go shopping. Enter the store, turn left, and head to the aisle with your desired products. You start reviewing the available selection and remember that you were planning to cut your environmental footprint. You give yourself a nudge to make a slightly better choice. Several brands boast the term eco-friendly, others shout green, and others still claim they are nature’s friend. You also see some recycled material percentages on certain labels. How do you choose?

You are excused from not having a straightforward recipe. The information regarding the sustainability of products available to consumers at the shelf is often vague, scarce, and misleading. Brands have the difficult task of balancing transparency and engaging language, scientific terminology and user-friendly explanations, detailed info and limited space. Upcoming regulations attempt to bring more guidance and rules, and thus clarity and transparency.

Yet, we still have plenty of methods available to distinguish genuine claims from greenwashing claims and thus choose the product that best matches our intent. Once you clarify this intent, you can start a quick evaluation of the product with only the information you have available at the shelf: the claims and labels, the ingredients and materials, and the competitors’ offerings.

Start from your intention

First, if you can, it’s good practice to clarify what environmental feature of a product is most important to you. In that specific product category and industry, is the packaging material a big problem? Or is it the way the product is manufactured in the supply chain? Can the product come from unsustainable sources or materials?

Usually, you’d expect manufacturers to have already considered the most important issues when improving the environmental footprint of their products, but that’s not always the case.

Then again, it is also a matter of the issues we mostly care about as consumers. We are not used to thinking in carbon emission equivalents, and some experts don’t even think we should. Certain people may be more concerned with plastic pollution, while others find animal farming unacceptable. And it’s alright to pick our battles.

3 steps to spot greenwashing

Greenwashing is a practice whereby organizations convey an incorrect impression or misleading information about their products and/or activities. It happens when companies try to emphasize a sustainable aspect of their product without giving the whole context or being accurate and transparent. Here is how you can stay away from greenwashed products when shopping.

1. Check the claims and labels

Sure, you’ve just read a catch slogan, and it made you feel better about that potential product. But how do you know whether there is any substance behind the claim? Here are three red flags to consider as you closely examine the product:

• Does it use vague or ambiguous language? Beware of terms like “natural,” “eco-friendly,” or “green” without certifications and specific explanations. Genuine eco-conscious products should provide detailed information about their sustainable attributes: reducing emissions, offering 100% or predominantly natural ingredients and no toxic ones, replacing previously unrecyclable materials with recyclable ones, reducing packaging, and so on.

• Does it lack (credible) certifications? See if the product displays any eco-labels and if these sound familiar to you. Authoritative certifications include Organic, Better Cotton Initiative, Cradle to Cradle Certified, Fair Trade, or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). A certified product is preferred because it has already undergone third-party verifications that ensure (in theory) that the product has met specific environmental standards.

• Do claims sound unrealistic or exaggerated? If the product promises extraordinary environmental benefits or absolute claims (100% sustainable) without providing any evidence or even contradicting itself elsewhere, put it down. While remarkable results are possible, companies should sustantiate them with proof; otherwise, sustainability is (currently) a journey with intermediary milestones.

2. Check materials and ingredients

Checking the ingredients and materials used in the making of a product and its packaging is a great way to verify claims made in the messaging.

One thing to look for is transparency. Are brands being transparent about their supply chains and manufacturing processes? Do they mention the different supply sources, materials, and production methods involved? The less information is available, the less trustworthy an environmental claim becomes.

If the company discloses a material as eco-friendly, they should accompany the claim with explanations. For instance, if the tag says biodegradable, it should further explain that it can degrade naturally in soil or water, over a certain period. If the product is marketed as “biodegradable”, but then it adds “industrially compostable”, the tag is misleading. You shouldn’t throw away the product with organic foods.

If you come across unfamiliar terms in the ingredient and material lists, it’s better to do a quick online research: after all, you’d better know what you put in your stomach or on your sink and how it can affect you. Greenwashing may involve masking harmful substances behind eco-friendly-sounding names.

3. Check competitors’ products

If you are not convinced, take a closer look at two or three brand offerings. Compare the claims and the way they disclose information. The more information you have available, the more you can understand what is the industry norm, and, thus, how to judge an environmental claim.

Bonus: Check the company’s track record

In time, you should become accustomed to some big brand names’ track records, from news, reports, and independent rankings and assessments. This will be highly useful when you try to determine the credibility and commitment of the company.

The future looks brighter for consumers, with QR codes, blockchain traceability, and other innovations promising a quick overview of a company’s overall value chain impact – directly at the shelf. For now, we must take a few extra steps as we navigate the mined field of sustainability claims.

Photo credit: Canva.com