'Green sins' plague baby products

Product manufacturers are listening to the message from their customers: “We want greener, more sustainable choices.” But too many companies still are responding to that demand by telling customers what they want to hear, rather than actually delivering the greener products they’re asking for.

That was one of the conclusions from TerraChoice’s latest study on greenwashing in the marketplace (pdf).

The third such study by the environmental marketing consultancy since 2007, “The Sins of Greenwashing 2010” offers considerable good news for eco-minded shoppers. Greenwashing overall — that is, making dubious or outright false claims about a product’s environmental friendliness — continues to decline, though it remains a significant problem. More encouraging still, the number of “sin-free,” greener products is rising, from 1 per cent in 2007 to nearly 4.5 per cent this year.

Once a company starts putting out greener products, it also tends to improve with time, the TerraChoice study finds.

“With experience in green marketing greenwashing declines, certification grows, and real green growth continues,” the report states.

One market segment in which that hasn’t happened yet is, unfortunately, toys and baby products. That’s been particularly true in the past year. As parents’ awareness of the risks of the plastic additive Bisphenol A, or BPA, has grown, so too have the number of products making claims to be BPA-free. And, while parents can find many more green toys and baby products this year than last year, those choices are rarely as virtuous as advertised.

“As compared to the study-wide finding of 4.4%, less than 1% of the ‘greener’ toys and baby products are free of the Sins of Greenwashing,” the study states. “We did not find a single ‘green’ toy (0.00%) that was free of greenwashing, and only 0.8% (only 6 of 706 products) of baby products were ‘sin-free.’ ”

The only other category to feature zero “sin-free” products was consumer electronics.

Despite having a long way to go, the encouraging takeaway from all this is that companies do pay attention to what customers say they want. As long as customers keep sending that message — and staying informed enough to be able to sort the real green from faux green products — it seems likely the marketplace will continue improving its eco credentials year over year.