I pulled the above image from the One-City blog. The add is for the Nestle Pure Life water bottle, which has an “Eco-Shape” (notice the trademark there). With this fashionably thinner bottle that has 15% less plastic we can all make a difference. Notice the asterisk* next to the “15% less plastic.”
I’ve looked into it and on the Nestle website it says the bottles now have 30-40% less plastic which might be nice. The note for the asterisk was very hard to find; it was covered by other text and itself was not text, it was a text-turned-image so I couldn’t copy and paste, also the color made it hard to read. It’s the grey text here:
The part I can read says, “… .5L bottles across twelve cities. Over 130 different .5L bottles were weighed across the water, soda, juice and tea categories. On average, the Eco-Shape bottle was found to be the lightest .5L bottle on the market containing 30% less plastic when compared to the average of other .5L bottles.” It’s actually really hard for me even to determine what this means. Are they saying they have less plastic when you compare it to the weight of other bottles? Does that mean that they aren’t actually looking at the exact numbers and statistics of how much plastic goes into their product compared to others, they are just measuring it solely by the weight of other same-sized bottles? Does anyone have a better idea at what this means?
It does seem like they are using less plastic than they use to, even if their measurment standards are a bit unreliable. But I’m not sure that I want to buy their product simply because their bottle has a little less plastic. Let’s be honest here, plastic is never really that great of a thing. If it doesn’t get recycled it lasts a super long time and it’s not actually “easier to live with” as the Nestle web-site claims. I’ve become increasingly wary of the plastic packaging that is wrapped around every little thing, like breath mints, fruit at Trader Joes (that’s another story), and water. We are told we can just throw it away, as if throwing it away is going to make it disappear forever…–>
Have you heard about the North Pacific Gyre, the giant mass of plastic soup in the Pacific Ocean that is about twice the size of Texas? See what happens to a good deal of the plastic we produce:
Not sure this is a greenwashing add…here’s why…
Now you can go green and feel good about yourself by switching to the Well’s Fargo online statements. This doesn’t come anywhere near the Nordstrom add telling us to go green by signing up with their credit card. Well’s Fargo isn’t trying to sell us anything here, they are just trying to save money, and connect in our minds their company with “Saving Trees.” Also I noticed that the term “Go Green” here quickly connects our billing statements to doing it online or on our computers.
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.
Is it okay to go through a new laptop every year or two if they are easier to recycle and less likely to leach harmful toxins into our ground water?…I see some dubious green-washing in Apple’s new line of MacBooks. No matter how recyclable a computer may be, more upgrades in shorter cycles means more resources and more energy consumed. And that is a step backwards in sustainability.
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.
Clorox Green Works – natural and biodegradable cleaning wipes. This is where I get confused as to what is greenwashing and what is not. Certainly it’s a form of manipulative advertising. We see in the ad that it says these cleaning wipes are 99% natural and biodegradable, which if that is true, is pretty stinking cool. The Ecollo blog seems to think Clorox is doing something special. If they are actually making some major improvements, is it wrong to put their plastic bottle in the middle of a grassy, green photo with flowers and sunshine? Is it okay to use words like “naturally?” I’m not sure, but it all seems like manipulative marketing anyway. The caption reads, “Just what the world needs. Another cleaning product…Actually they’re exactly what the world needs.” What do you all think?
Mentos – Freshly Picked Gum. Ad from People Magazine in February, 2009. Greenwashing at it’s best, or maybe it’s worst? I’m not sure. I can’t tell if this is a joke or not, but it certainly implies that their processed gum is fresh and straight off the vine. I’d love to see a tree that grows Mentos gum pieces. I hope it’s a joke.
Ford Escape Hybrid SUV Commercial. Kermit the Frog singing:
It’s not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red or yellow or gold
It’s not that easy being green
(Kermit sees the car)
Hmm, I guess it is easy being green.
