With the steady growth of the green marketplace, there has come increasing concern about — and prevalence of, depending on who you ask — greenwashing: A surplus of labels and a lack of verification behind them has led to shopper distrust of green claims just when truly green products are reaching mainstream acceptance.

Green Seal, the nonprofit certification group, is celebrating its 20th anniversary by undertaking a dramatic shift in its operations: In addition to continuing to certify individual products and services as environmentally friendly, the group has just launched a company certification pilot project that aims to measure, verify and push for continuous improvement of a company’s entire operations.

Federal regulators have accused four people and two companies of using bogus claims about “green initiatives” to entice more than 300 investors into what was really a $30 million Ponzi scheme.

Maker of Rayon Clothes Barred from Deceptive “Bamboo” Claims
Source: Federal Trade Commission

Just because bamboo is green does not mean that companies who purport to make clothing and other textiles from processed bamboo can make unsupported “green” claims. The Federal Trade Commission today announced a settlement with a company that allegedly falsely claimed its rayon products are made of bamboo fiber, retain bamboo’s antimicrobial properties, and are biodegradable.

Under the settlement, the company has agreed that it will not make any future bamboo claims unless they are true and backed by reliable evidence, and that it will no longer claim that the clothing and bath products it sells are made of bamboo fiber – when they actually are made of rayon processed from bamboo plants.

+ In the Matter of The M Group, Inc., also doing business as Bamboosa…
+ Have You Been Bamboozled by Bamboo Fabrics?
+ How to Avoid Bamboozling Your Customers

You recycle, ride a bike to work, and buy organic food. You pay extra for “green” electricity and have an eco-friendly car. So can you rest easy, with a clean conscience that your life is as sustainable as it can reasonably be?

Well … although many of us try our best to minimize environmental impacts, our actions don’t always achieve as much as we believe.

Expensive products that are marketed as eco-friendly may help us to assuage our guilt while drawing our attention away from the more pressing issues.

Meanwhile, other actions and products can be useful, but only when used as part of a wider environmentally aware lifestyle. Most worrying of all, some things marketed as sustainable can have negative side effects for the environment—that’s called greenwashing.

The Green Guide talked to several sustainability experts who highlighted five eco-strategies and products that may not be all they are hyped up to be.

The Department of Energy’s new label for LED lighting products looks a lot like the food nutrition label on your favorite box of cereal. It was created to give a quick summary of performance data – such as light output and color – and, ideally, to help prevent poor quality products from spoiling the nascent LED market.

The trouble is, the label’s use is not always legitimate.

Since the agency launched its “Lighting Facts” program in December 2008, there have been 25 cases of label misuse, according to James Brodrick, the manager of solid state lighting at the Department of Energy.

Excuse a brief rant about what seems to be a rise in ridiculous cover stories and op-eds. Apparently, the only way to get printed these days is to say something that makes “counterintuitive” seem quaint. No, you have to go all the way to crazy-town.

This kind of nonsense is happening on all topics (do I even have to mention “death panels”?), but in my wheelhouse, I’ve seen some doozies in the green world. A couple cases in point lately:

Four companies’ products advertised as being made from bamboo are actually made of rayon and have been making claims about their products and manufacturing processes that are false or haven’t been proven, according to charges from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Three of the companies have already settled with the FTC and will no longer use the false and misleading claims.

The FTC said that Jonäno, Mad Mod, Pure Bamboo and Bamboosa were all marketing rayon clothing and other products – marketed under the names ecoKashmere, Pure Bamboo, Bamboo Comfort and BambooBaby – as being made with 100 percent bamboo fiber. Rayon is a man-made fiber that can be made from the cellulose of any plant or tree, even bamboo, but since it goes through chemical processing, the resulting fiber cannot be called bamboo fiber or whatever plant was used to make it.

Over the last month, I have traveled extensively visiting manufacturers across a wide spectrum of industries. During these discussions, there has been a recurring theme: Manufacturers have become more aware of the potential liabilities involved in making green claims.

Since the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed three complaints against retailers in early June, manufacturers have certainly taken notice and are re-evaluating the way they introduce environmental claims.

An Apple ad campaign claims that its line of Macbooks is the “world’s greenest family of notebooks” — but a recent ruling by the ad industry’s self-governing body found that claim to be somewhat of an overstatement. Not clear yet is whether Apple will modify its ads.

The EcoLogo Program has started developing a standard that will allow toys to receive EcoLogo certification for meeting certain environmental criteria.

As more organizations worldwide come to see the value of investing in eco-friendlier hardware, PC vendors are jockeying for the right to lay claim to the greenest wares. Proving a central weapon in this battle is the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) registry. Plenty of companies are finding the tool invaluable for finding green machines that meet their particular needs. The problem is, some vendors — intentionally or otherwise — might be abusing the system to make themselves and their wares look greener.