As green moves beyond niche market status and becomes the color of choice for mass merchandisers, not all products and companies are as environmentally responsible as they advertise themselves to be. Hence, the term "greenwashing," which was coined as far back as the 1970s by environmental activists to describe advertising by corporations meant to portray them as environmentally responsible in order to mask environmental wrongdoings. The U.S.-based watchdog group CorpWatch defines greenwash as "the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment."' Former Madison Avenue advertising executive Jerry Mander (best known for his 1977 book Four Arguments far the Elimination of Television) called it "ecopornography" in a 1972 article in Communications and Arts Magazine. The term "greenwashing" is now used to describe a wide range of attempts by businesses to attract environmentally aware consumers, including the creation of organizations, celebrity endorsements, event sponsorship and the use of meaningless and (inverifiable words like "natural,"' "green," "eco-friendly," "non-toxic and "chemical-tree" on labels and packaging. Even the word "organic" is meaningless unless it is backed up by certification. A classic example of greenwashing is described in an article on the businessethics.ca website by Melissa Whellams, a corporate social responsibility advisor with Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR) and Chris MacDonald, a business ethics professor at St. Mary's University in Halifax. They cite an advertisement that appeared in National Geographic magazine in 2004, in which Ford Motor Company tried to convince readers of its commitment to the environment by announcing the launch of the Escape Hybrid SUV and the remodeling of a factory. The ad read, "Green vehicles. Cleaner factories. It's the right road for our company, and we're well underway." Whellams and MacDonald note that Ford failed to tell readers that it only planned to produce 20,000 of its Hybrid SUVs per year, while continuing to produce almost 80,000 F-series trucks per month. "Moreover," they write, "just prior to the campaign's release, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that Ford had the worst fleet wide fuel economy of all major automakers. Ford's failure to live up to its environmentally friendly image earned the company first prize among America's top ten worst greenwashers of the year." Meanwhile, to avoid 1,4-Dioxane, the OCA urges consumers to search ingredient lists for indications of ethoxylation including: "myreth," "oleth," "laureth," "ceteareth," any other "eth," "PEG," "polyethylene," "polyethylene glycol," "polyoxyethylene" or "oxynol" in ingredient names. In general, the OCA urges consumers to avoid products with unpronounceable ingredients.
