Fake Going-Green (Greenwashing)

Greenwashing is when companies spend more money advertising how green they are instead of putting that time into real environmental improvements. It's similar to when cigarette companies needed to spend money on health campaigns. The companies now are spending money on going-green campaigns because they are harming the environment and want to hide it. 

• The "Fur Free Alliance" has been accused of participating in the fur trade (they spend millions on anti-fur campaigns)

• Chevron (the gasoline company) spends millions on rainforest campaigns as they burn down rainforests.

• McDonalds got in trouble for saying, "we plan on having 0 emissions by 2050," without enough evidence. They also got in trouble for changing their logo to green in Europe to promote them going green as a company.

There are "Eco-Labels" which can be applied to products. But with these, the product only needs to have a low environmental impact. It doesn't matter if the company that produces that product is napalming rainforests, as long as that product doesn't.

To keep things simple, when people are doing good for others, they generally don't brag about it unless they are trying to satisfy an ego. When companies do good for the environment out of the goodness of their heart, they wouldn't want to spend more money on marketing than actually helping the environment.