Phony Eco-Label's Greenwash Challenged

Greenwashing by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) was again up front and center at an industry conference this week–this time at SFI's own annual meeting. On Wednesday, above the entrance to the hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia where the meeting was held, ForestEthics unfurled a 288 square foot banner which read "Selling False Information = Greenwash".

"SFI partners with some of the world’s wealthiest corporations to greenwash their destruction of North America’s forests," said Aaron Sanger of ForestEthics. "Worse yet, these same corporations fund SFI’s misleading marketing, a practice currently under scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission."

In March, ForestEthics mailed letters to Fortune 500 companies that rely heavily on direct mail to market their products and services, including companies from the insurance, financial services and telecommunications sectors. Citing public controversy about SFI’s deceptive ‘green’ marketing practices, the letters offer ForestEthics’ expertise to help companies find legitimate ways to improve and promote the environmental attributes of their products. (Letter available by request.)

In September of last year, ForestEthics filed legal complaints with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that became the focus of an article in The New York Times.

The FTC complaint described how SFI, funded and managed primarily by large logging companies, gives a seal of approval to these same companies’ logging practices that harm people and wildlife, damage water resources and destroy forests. The IRS complaint focused on SFI's nonprofit status. SFI’s funding and activities serve the private interests of wood and paper companies that want a 'green' image: an improper purpose for an organization with the same nonprofit status that the IRS gives to public charities.