What’s a Green Garden Center to Do?
Here’s the bottom line: When you make green marketing claims, you risk losing the carefully cultivated trust you have with your customers. And you risk regulatory action. On the other hand, the market demand for sustainable goods and services is too compelling a business opportunity to ignore. First, let’s look at what not to say. The most obvious cases of greenwashing arise from claims that are either patently false or cannot be verified. Several more subtle risks were identified by TerraChoice. They found the most common cause of consumer confusion to be products or services that promote something good while ignoring something equally bad or even worse. For example, if a grocery store in Minneapolis were to promote organically grown tomatoes but failed to mention that they were flown in from Southeast Asia. Another risk is marketing something as a sustainable improvement when it is really just the lesser of two evils. For instance, marketing Malathion as the new sustainable alternati
