Green products or just green advertisements?

False and misleading claims can be hard to detect. Products that have not been changed can be advertised as having an environmental aspect that they always had and that is typical of all such products. One example is the claim that laundry detergents are not being tested on animals when they never have been. The most cynical marketers might simply use environmental imagery to conjure up the impression that a product is good for the environment without making any real claims at all; this is what Paul Gilding of Greenpeace has referred to as 'bung a dolphin on the label and we'll be right' (quoted in Macken 1991, p. 42).

Some companies make the most out of measures they have been forced to take by the government, making it seem that they have undertaken the improvements because they care about the environment. Companies that have poor environmental records can also improve their image and increase their sales merely by using recycled paper in their products or making similar token adjustments. Peter Dykstra, media director of Greenpeace, USA, says, 'It's not that all these ads are untrue. They depict 5 percent of environmental virtue to mask the 95 percent of environmental vice' (quoted in Beers & Capellaro 1991, p. 88). Others, such as Dadd and Carothers (1990, p. 12), ask whether we should buy recycled paper from a company that pollutes rivers with pulp mill effluent.

The nuclear energy industry is an example of an industry that has jumped on the environmental bandwagon to improve its image. In one advertisement, the USA Council for Energy Awareness pictures a family of birds, and states, 'Every year, the ospreys return to their wildlife-preserve around the nuclear electric plant near Waterford, Connecticut, where nesting platforms have been built for them by the local utility. It's one more example of how peacefully nuclear energy coexists with the environment.' The message is that the nuclear power plant does not pollute the air or produce greenhouse gases. No mention is made of the environmental and health problems surrounding extraction of uranium, nuclear accidents or disposal of nuclear wastes.

It does not make sense to concentrate on one part of a product's life-cycle. Nor, Kellner argues, does it make sense to ignore the policies of the company that produced the product and its subsidiaries. 'Otherwise we could find that we are "voting with our purses" for manufacturers that are anti-ecological, but indirectly so.' (1990, p. 20)

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