Over the past three days we’ve seen what we’ve been calling “A Greener Shade of Greenwash” from the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

In Part One we laid the foundation. Showing how the NRA uses slick marketing and well-produced multimedia to deliver a message supposedly promoting green business practices, emphasizing the advantages of appealing to the eco-minded customer and implementing sustainability best practices. The NRA says they offer the Greener Restaurant program as a solution for restaurateurs.

In Part Two we saw step-by-step how an imaginary restaurant - Green Wallace Wash – becomes Certified/Recognized by the NRA as a “Greener Restaurant” three times over, all by doing nothing more than paying the annual membership fee and going online and making false claims about its internal sustainability program – all endorsed by the National Restaurant Association’s Greener Restaurant program.

We discuss the National Restaurant Association’s attempt to sidestep accountability for a program with no standards, benchmarks, or verification by insisting such burden is on the shoulders of the consumer, not the organization granting the endorsement.

In Part Three we examined the Conserve Solutions Center, a pavilion planned for the exhibit floor of the upcoming National Restaurant Association Restaurant Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago on May 22-25.

The Conserve Solutions Center is promoted as an opportunity for business-to-business marketing of “green business solutions,” an opportunity to display green products and services for interested restaurant owners.

We saw how “Troy,” a prospective exhibitor at the Conserve Solutions Center submitted four items for consideration: two products made of virgin plastic, one cleaning product clearly stated as made from 100% Chlorine and ethyl cellusolve (a chemical listed in California as a hazardous material), and a Styrofoam cup. When specifically asked if the products were acceptable for inclusion at the Conserve Solutions Center, a representative from the NRA replied in an email: “Your products are a great fit for the Conserve Solutions Center”.

We have established a clear pattern of the kind of cynicism, deception, and false claims that define the worst in greenwashing. It should not – indeed it can not – be the burden of the customer to benchmark and verify claims implicitly and explicitly endorsed by the organization issuing the endorsement - or the endorsement means nothing. That is a truth the semantical argument in which the National Restaurant Association would have us engage over a “recognition” vs. a “certification” program cannot dissuade.

The National Restaurant Association has undertaken a sophisticated, well-planned, and intentional greenwash campaign. It ultimately hurts those it professes to help, casting doubt and suspicion on legitimately benchmarked and verified sustainability programs.

And there’s one more thing.

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The Conserve Solution Center - Providing real solutions or pushing greenwash?

In parts One and Two of our series A Greener Shade of Greenwash, we demonstrate how the National Restaurant Association (NRA), through their Greener Restaurant program and Conserve website, employ a compelling message aimed at restauranteurs interested in the advantages of implementing sustainability best practices in their operations.

From attracting the growing number of eco-minded customers actively seeking out green dining options to appealing to the sincere, sustainability-minded business owner, the NRA offers as a solution the Greener Restaurant program. A program that, as we see in part Two of this series, requires nothing more than payment of the $250 annual membership fee and basic computer skills to produce signed Greener Restaurant certificate and a host of marketing materials, including use of the Greener Restaurant logo. It doesn’t even require an actual restaurant to be recognized by the National Restaurant Association as a Greener Restaurant.

It is a program with no standards, benchmarking, or verification, claiming instead that such burden rests with the consumer. It is, therefore, a program that is meaningless and detrimental to the cause it claims to support. Instead of a solution, the Greener Restaurant program only creates confusion and suspicion.

Now we’ll turn our attention to the upcoming National Restaurant Association Restaurant Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago on May 22-25, and NRA plans to set up a pavilion on the exhibit floor called the Conserve Solution Center. In a press release the NRA says this about the purpose of the exhibit:

“Restauranteurs looking for ways to ramp up environmental efforts and find greener business solutions will find the information, products, services, and contacts they need…”

Care to guess what kind of products and services the NRA sees as “green business solutions?” (Here’s a hint: remember that Styrofoam cup we introduced back in part one?)

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Georgia-Pacific claims their “PerfecTouch” line of plastic cups are compostable (see second bullet point in this online listing). While there is a bit of a qualification in that listing, our whistle-blower on this story says the cup is also described in print catalogs with no qualification regarding its compostability whatsoever.

The cup is made of polyethylene, a material that is not compostable. To claim a product is compostable, it must pass the ASTM D6400 and D6868 test, and be certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute. The PerfcTouch cup made by Georgia-Pacific does not meet any of these qualifications.

Our reader/watchdog summed it up best: ”GP (Georigia-Pacific) is falsely advertising this product and completely misleading consumers which cause bad soil quality, consumer confusion, and is plain-and-simple green washing”.

If you have a tip for us, please let us know.

Guest post by Lesley Fox

– Editor’s note: this post is a followup to our recent post on the “Fur is Green” campaign by the Fur Council of Canada –

It’s really not worth the rebuttal, but I just can’t help but comment on the “Fur is Green” campaign by The Fur Council of Canada. Their desperation to appear hip, timely or relevant couldn’t be more transparent.

Claiming that fur and fur-trimmed products are “green”, “ecological”, or “environmental” is the equivalent of saying, “have a nice day”. There are no restrictions or regulations on using these terms and the fur industry has no independent endorsement or certification of its so-called commitment to the environment or “eco” practices.

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Frito Lay All Natural Snacks. They say, “We Grow the Best Snacks on Earth.” I had saved an advertisement, but I couldn’t find it, which had this growing the best snacks slogan and there was a corn field with a bag of chips next to it.  This definitely gives the impression that they are giving you a healthy product, and that they are growing their crops the way any normal farmer would grow their crops. And we see on their bags that the chips are “still made with all natural oil.” I would hope so! But Frito Lay brand chips are not a healthy snack. As The Greenway Communique points out about a bag of Cheetos Puffs, “here may not be any trans fat, but every ounce has one and a half grams of saturated fat and ten grams of total fat. As for the real cheese, it’s in there. Listed on the ingredients just after “salt.” So, one 11-ounce bag of these “nutritious” snacks will give you more than 150 percent of your daily fat needs with just a pinch of cheese.” Sounds like they are trying to cover up the facts with slogans about all natural oils, or using real cheese, or 0 grams of trans fats.

It seems to me that they are trying to gain attention by giving the perception that they are “going green” by making big announcements that they are going to use cars that are more fuel efficient (instead of using cars that can be powered off the grease from the chips), or amping up their website to make it seems that buying their chips will help save the world because they are using less water. The website reads “The biggest impact we can have is to not have one.” Sure, that sounds nice, and makes them look like they are trying and that they care but their products remain entirely unhealthy, and they are attempting to hid this, and that is the true test of how much they care.

Nordstrom Goes Green. The card reads “We’ve Gone Green!” The card explains the extent of their “going green” as them having created a system for you to check your nordstrom card online, if it qualified for an annual summary. They detail out how much paper they will be saving so long as you sign up with their online visa account. So, Nordstrom will help save 476 trees if they can get us all to enroll in their visa program.

Zip Cars, or Zipcar, if you haven’t heard of them, are sort of like rental cars but they are parked in various parking spots throughout cities. You sign up for a zipcar account and you can reserve them online. When you need one, you just go to the nearest parking lot that has one of these and you can check it out for a couple hours or a day or whatever. It’s kind of cool because then  you don’t need to own a car if you rarely use one. You can just pay for this as you need it.

The advertising though is clearly using the green marketing approach. We see a car driving through tall green grass, implying that Zipcar, that if you “Drive Differently” you are saving the environment. This is where I’m torn, because I’m not sure exactly the goal of Zipcar with this ad. Are they just  a rental car? Are they asking you to drive less, are they asking you to not own a car, but just use theirs when you need to? What are they suggesting? I’m not sure.

Traeger Green Grill wood pellet BBQ. Is it grilling the world or saving it?