Seattle Weekly -- Greentenders
In honor of Earth Day, here are seven classic cases of ecohypocrisy.,
April 20th, 2011
Excerpted from the Seattle Weekly:
Being an eco-conscious consumer in 2011 means always being confused. And the lesson of the Obamas' swing set is instructive, because it shows that behind that confusion lays the insidious corporate strategy known as greenwashing.
Both the FSC and the SFI purport to judge whether a wood product can be deemed environmentally friendly. (As one advocate put it, think of them as battling for the right to be the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, only for forests.) Both feature green-tree logos on their websites, got their start in the mid-'90s, and are nonprofits that play up the independent nature of their environmental assessments. But only one of the two groups is funded primarily by the same timber industry it's supposed to be evaluating.
According to a report released last year by ForestEthics, a group devoted to protecting endangered woods, SFI has the admissions standards of a diploma mill. Of 543 audits of SFI-certified companies since 2004, the report found that only one lumber-cutter was denied the group's eco-label. The reason: The company had, among other minor "violations," failed to join the timber industry's largest trade association.
