Did you ever stay in a hotel that places cards in your room that encourage you to reuse the towels and sheets during your stay? It gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling that your stay is helping the environment. You are saving water! When I walk around such a hotel and see an extraordinary number of lights on—and kept on all night—I wonder whether the hotel is really all that committed to saving the environment. Or is the hotel just trying to attract green customers?

In the 1980′s the term greenwashing was invented to refer to the practice of hotels that promoted linen reuse but did not also have other strategies for recycling. Green is good. Don’t get me wrong. But it is deceptive to spend more money promoting products as green than actually making sure the company is green or that the product itself is green.

That’s one of the reasons why I posted Is Bottled Water Green? some time back. Focusing on whether the bottle itself is better than some other bottle totally misses the point that bottling water is not an environmentally friendly practice to begin with.

Do you have any examples of greenwashing?

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