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Green or Greenwashing? A Guide
      by Rob Knox

Welcome to the first article in our weekly series on greenwashing.

With so many people becoming more aware of the impact their purchases make on the environment, many have chosen to purchase products that are more environmentally friendly. All of us green consumers are sending a message to companies, and they're responding, but not always in the ways we'd like.

Plenty of companies, especially those that have been leaders in sustainability, are doing the right thing and genuinely looking into how they can reduce their impact on the environment, (by using less energy, recycling materials, making sure raw materials are responsibly sourced, and reducing packaging and waste  are just some examples). Read More »

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  Name: mikko asaki Date: 5/23/2008 11:38:38 AM  
 
  I just wanted to elaborate a little on the plastic water bottle comment and petroleum plastic in general. A simple but clear way to look at petroleum plastics is all plastic products will eventually end up in our oceans, landfills, or somewhere in our environment where they will remain plastic for centuries to millennia regardless of whether or not they are "recycled" (downcycled). Plastics degrade each time they are broken down and are made into a lesser quality product. Plastic bottles usually go through only one downcycle. They usually go from plastic bottle to plastic-board (the board shaped plastic you see some benches made of) to waste. Plastics are also highly toxic in production and break-down processes and leach and off-gas low levels of toxins when simply sitting around. Most plastics #3-7 that are picked up by recycling companies simply go to landfill since there is very little market for their downcycling. The majority #1-2 are shipped to china to be processed. What happens to them is also unverified once they reach china. Plastics have been accumulating all over our planet, especially in the great pacific garbage patch (a plastic island in the pacific that is currently twice the size of texas), and have been killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of wild lives who suffocate from tangled debris or fill their stomachs with undigestible plastic bits that look like food and eventually starve to death. So, after all this wonderful and uplifting information, I just wanted to say how incredibly wonderful it is to boycott all petro-plastics, use alternatives like wood, glass, metal, paper products, cloth, and some bioplastics, virtually eliminate disposables from our lifestyle with reusables, create as little waste as possible, live simply and happily, and petition companies, agencies and others to do the same. may harmony spread  
 
 
  Name: Jill Herbers Date: 5/22/2008 1:12:27 PM  
 
  Poland Spring--with their new "eco-friendly" bottle that supposedly uses 30% less plastic. I've even seen environmental outlets recommend this product. Meanwhile, the danger is that with the advertising used, millions of consumers are tricked into thinking it's environmentally-friendly to drink bottled water all the time, and tons of plastic bottles are still going into landfills (and even if plastic bottles are being recycled, recycling takes energy and other resources.) This isn't helping Americans kick their several-bottles-of water-a-day habit, and that's the environmental choice. This bottle is an alternative if you're somewhere and there is no other option than bottled water, but that's not very often, and it's not being marketed that way.  
 
 
  Name: Jill Herbers Date: 5/22/2008 1:08:26 PM  
 
  Poland Spring--with their new "eco-friendly" bottle that supposedly uses 30% less plastic. I've even seen environmental outlets recommend this product. Meanwhile, the danger is that with the advertising used, millions of consumers are tricked into thinking it's environmentally-friendly to drink bottled water all the time, and tons of plastic bottles are still going into landfills. This bottle is an alternative if you're somewhere and there is no other option than bottled water, but that's not very often.