Painting a green veneer on consumer goods is far from a new marketing tactic. In 1992, the US Federal Trade Commission issued its first “Green Guide” aimed at squelching greenwashing long before greenwashing was a household word.
It’s hard to blame marketers – really. It’s not that hard to find low-hanging fruit: non-discerning, green-minded consumers eager to buy bright, shiny new products that will help them lighten their footprint on Mother Earth. Thankfully the volume of egregiously greenwashed boondoggles has decreased in recent years. But it has not – as we shall see below – been washed away.
We’ve picked out some of our favorite dubious green products and rated them on a scale of “meh” to “100% boondoggle”.
SeaWorld’s cup half empty?
Rating: 100% boondoggle
SeaWorld has been swimming against a strong tide of negative public opinion since the documentary Blackfish surfaced in 2013. The film alleges that SeaWorld puts profits before ethics, tying the deaths of trainers to psychological trauma that the park’s killer whales endure.
SeaWorld blames its poor stock price (down nearly 50% since its initial public offering last year) partly on the anti-SeaWorld campaign that followed the film’s release. In response, it has announced that it will upgrade its killer whale environment beginning in 2018, a move that has been criticized for failing to seriously address the problems raised in the film.
Perhaps this adds insult to injury, but SeaWorld Orlando’s attempt to get environmentally concerned customers drinking from its “Cup That Cares” sounds like another boondoggle. The souvenir cups – introduced last year in partnership with CocaCola – promote the park’s “Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin” exhibit. Embedded inside each plastic vessel is a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that communicates wirelessly to a transceiver inside soft drink vending machines in the park. Each time the cup is refilled, the machine reads the chip and displays how much CO2 he or she has saved based on how many times it has been refilled.
SeaWorld has not responded to specific questions with regard to just how the software determines the customer’s CO2 savings upon each refill, aside from noting that the savings grows each time the customer purchases a refill. Presumably the savings would be lower for the basic Cup That Cares model – which costs $9.99 – than for the create-your-own model which doubles as a penguin toy and can be embellished with “40 accessories such as eyes, hair, glasses, hats, bow tie, necklaces and even miniature Shamu® ice cream bars and SeaWorld shopping bags”, according to the company. This next-level cup costs $15.99, but each plastic accessory is sold separately.
It’s hard to imagine how much Coca-Cola one would have to drink to offset the carbon emissions associated with a fully blinged-out plastic Cup That Cares. In a promotional video a snippet of the refill machine display boasts: “Caring Counts! Your 44th refill has now saved 1,188 g of CO2 from our planet plus reduced trash in landfills.”
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, burning one gallon of gas emits 8,877 grams of CO2. So unless your Cup That Cares converts into a magic emissions-free carpet that brings you to SeaWorld Orlando and plops you – cup in hand – into the penguin exhibit, the math does not come out in the penguin’s favor.
De-ice debunk
Rating: iffy at best
Conventional rock salt, which is used for de-icing roads, consists of sodium chloride (ie salt), and – frequently – magnesium chloride or calcium chloride, which enhance de-icing performance, but cost more.
Over the decades, rock salt has been the culprit behind millions of rusted automobile chassises, although these days automakers have made cars relatively salt-resistant. Roadside plants, animals and waterways – especially urban streams – that receive effluent rich in rock salt are not always so lucky. To partly address these environmental impacts, many municipalities have begun using liquid brines or rock salt with alternative, plant-based additives – such as beet juice – that have very low freezing temperatures.
These alternatives are a real win-win insofar as being a (profitable) use for what would otherwise be food or beverage production waste.
Yet any de-icer can be harmful or mostly benign. Its impact – or lack thereof – is the result of how well or poorly they are used, according to Russell Alger, director of the Institute of Snow Research at Michigan State in Houghton, Michigan.
Take, for example, Organic Melt, a de-icer from a company called Eco Solutions. “Maybe 25% of the weight [of the product] is beet juice,” said Alger. The remainder, in the case of Organic Melt, is sodium chloride. As he put it: “So the claim is that [the de-icer] impacts the environment less [than conventional rock salt]. Is that really true? I don’t know. It depends on how you apply it. If you use enough of it, the sodium chloride will have negative impacts on some plants.”
And sure: the beet juice is organic, insofar as it is carbon-based. But in large doses, the product’s organic ingredient could introduce a new harm into the ecosystem by fostering algae growth which – along with bacteria that feed on the organic elements – would increase oxygen demands leaving less oxygen for nearby plants and animals.
Green beer goggles
Rating: 100% boondoggle
We’ve all seen the words “Save the Earth” or some variation used to market scores of products that seem to be best left uncreated in the first place. It is hard to think of a better candidate than the eCool beer cooler, a can dispenser that one buries into the ground so that the 24 cans of beer it holds can remain perfectly cooled by using the Earth as nature’s air conditioner. “Do something great for yourself and the environment”, the eCool website suggests . “With the eCool you can always drink a cold beer with good conscience”. It will only set you back $369.
Here I’ve been drinking cold refrigerator-chilled beer all these years without realizing it was ecocide. Maybe someday soon my local grocer – and the breweries that serve it – will start digging massive holes in the ground so they too can save the Earth and start chilling beer nature’s way.
Yes: refrigerators are energy hogs and contain nasty refrigerants. But unless you can build a complete root cellar in your home and vanquish the fridge completely (goodbye ice cream) it’s hard to see how the eCooler lowers your carbon footprint.
In theory burying beer at a camp site sounds like a backpacker’s dream. But the makers of eCool suggest using a garden drill to create the boozy grave. Good luck fitting that in your camping kit. Pro tip – if there’s a river or lake nearby stash the beer in an eco-friendly canvas bag, tie it closed with a rope, sink the bag and tie it off to an anchor. No electricity required.
No river? Consider whiskey. You’ll save on weight.
Closed loop-de-loop?
Rating: iffy at best
Since 2009, TerraCycle has diverted nearly 3bn pieces of waste – from Capri Sun drink pouches to cigarette butts – from ugly fates as landfill fodder, incinerator fuel or worse, marine pollution. Along the way it has gotten very good at turning trash into dollars, growing its annual revenue from $7.5m to roughly $20m by selling products comprised of recycled materials that municipal recycling facilities won’t take.
TerraCycle operates under a very smart business model. The companies – such as Kraft Foods and Frito-Lay – whose products are diverted from landfill underwrite the costs of collecting and processing them into new products. In return, these manufacturers not only get green cred, they also receive additional marketing thanks to their logo-packed packaging being turning into everything from backpacks to belts.
What these manufacturers do not receive with this model, however, is a strong incentive to stop making non-recyclable packaging in the first place. This makes TerraCycle’s tagline “Eliminating the Idea of Waste” rather suspect to environmentalists such as Beth Terry. She crusades against single-use packaging through her blog, My Plastic-Free Life.
In particular, she takes issue with TerraCycle’s support of single-use coffee capsules. The company collects Nespresso coffee pods and turns them into plastic lumber products. Terry believes if TerraCycle really wanted to eliminate waste, it would suggest consumers make coffee the old fashioned way. “Coffee pods are inherently wasteful, and the idea that you can ship them off somewhere to be downcycled doesn’t make them any less wasteful,” she said.
TerraCycle spokesman Albe Zakes defended the company’s role in the waste stream. He noted that while they’re not currently accepted by municipal recyclers, things like juice pouches offer some carbon saving in transportation because they are lighter than glass or plastic alternatives. But despite its 78,800 collection locations, the company is only diverting 3-5% of all drink pouches sold in the US from landfills.
The company’s response to those meager figures is – give it time. TerraCycle, Zakes added, is building recycling infrastructure by developing technologies and generating the critical mass of specific kinds of waste needed to make recycling economically feasible.
When asked if TerraCycle supports regulations aimed at making manufacturers fiscally responsible for recycling their packaging – known as extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, which are common in Europe but have gained little traction in the US – Zakes said it does. But he added: “We think of ourselves as a privatized version of EPR laws.”
Even if EPR laws pass in the US, he added, it would take years to enforce them. “If we went out of business tomorrow, manufacturers who use non-recycled packaging would not go away,” he said.
Dents in the bio-armor
Rating: meh
Plastic made from plants rather than oil. It’s a great idea! Just like transportation fuel made from corn is a great idea. On paper. But as with corn ethanol, some of the environmental benefits of bioplastics get lost in the translation from paper to reality.
Perhaps the biggest downside of bioplastic is that it has been introduced to consumer products with a heaping dose of confusing marketing. Core to the confusion is a major bifurcation among bioplastics. Some – such as Coca-Cola’s PET “PlantBottle” – are chemically identical to conventional plastic but use (around 30%) plant-based feedstocks. These are recyclable, which would be more encouraging if the PET recycling rate in the US was higher than its paltry 25%.
Other material – such as Cargill’s “NatureWorks” bioplastic – is derived from fermented plant sugars that are plasticized into polylactide (PLA). These are not recyclable. But they are compostable – though only in industrial composting facilities, not in your backyard garden pile.
Yet non-compostable plastic is branded as if it were compostable (what do you think when you hear “PlantBottle”?), and non-recyclable bioplastic is positioned as a seamless swap-in for oil-based cups and clamshells. So consumers naturally want to toss it in the recycling bin. Confused yet?
There’s one more issue: the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers PLA a synthetic material and therefore not permissible as a feedstock for organic certified compost. As a result, you might be dutifully sending your compostable plastics to a municipal composting facility where they are promptly filtered out and sent to a landfill. (There is some good news here, though. According to the Organic Material Review Institute, the USDA is in the process of lifting its ban on bioplastic materials in compost.)
Aside from all this, you must account for the petroleum and water inputs (fertilizer, transportation, molding) that are needed to create bioplastics.
In short, these new materials are not a panacea for waste. Reusability in most cases still trumps convenience from an environmental point of view. And even reusable goods might not be the best place for bioplastic. Kids’ gear maker Zoe B sells biodegradable beach toys, for instance. According to the marketing material: “If washed out to sea our toys will fully break down in 2-3 years (not 500 years like ordinary plastic).” Um, thanks?
Sure, it’s the lesser of two evils. But nine times out of 10, you could find enough discarded plastic on a beach to make DIY sand-castle tools.
All that said, the future for bioplastic holds promise. Research projects – some backed by major corporations and others being pulled together in small labs and garages – are improving bioplastics’ performance and finding ways to turn really climate-unfriendly waste – such as methane – into bioplastic. Plus Coca-Cola is inching closer to 100% bio-based PlantBottles. Now if only they’d drop the name.
Have your own favorite examples of greenwashed goods? Add your own in the comments below.
Mary Catherine O’Connor is an independent reporter and co-founder of Climate Confidential.
The sustainable design hub is funded by Nike. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.