Bee Green Greenwashing

So yesterday in my post Welcome to 2010 an Earth Odyssey I talked about simple ways to green up your life and our future.  One of those suggestions was to be aware of packaging when making purchases and that brings me to todays topic, Greenwashing.   Greenwashing is a term used to describe companies and products who are jumping on the ecomovement by trying to claim to be green, but on closer inspection are simply trying to fool us all.

This Christmas I received this wonderful and thoughtful gift from my mother.  She chose this for me because she knows how much I love houseplants and being green.  I love it, however it is a great example of a green wash.

I love to Bee Green!

So this company is selling an idea of being green, but check out the next photo and you'll see that they aren't actually green at all.  My cute little plant pot came wrapped in 1 layer of cardboard (not so bad, I'll reuse the box for sorting colored bag strips and when it's worn out I can recycle it) and 2 layers of *gasp* styrofoam.  Yuck!  Styrofoam has NO place in a green product.  I can't recycle it, I can't burn it, it doesn't compost.  It's NOT GREEN! 

 

But this company obviously doesn't really believe in being green

If this company was actually green they would have used cardboard made from recyled content for their packaging.  For a comparable price to styrofoam they could have used EcoCradle natural and compostable packaging material or another natural material.

I hope that by sharing this example, you too will become more aware of the packaging used in your purchases, and be aware that there are many unscrupulous companies out there who are trying to take advantage of environmentally minded people and Greenwash their products and services.  Another example of the age old adage "buyer beware!"