Being green or going green is a hot trend in many different industries lately, because our awareness of how our action are affecting the environment has been heightened over the past decade. Marketers know that consumers want to be more green, so they have picked up on the trend that some consumers will be more motivated to purchase a product or patronize a business with solid green practices. However, a good thing can easily turn into a bad thing when used by someone with the wrong intentions.
What is Green Washing?
Greenwashing is the practice of making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, technology or company practice.
How To Avoid Green Washing
- Be Transparent: Don’t hide anything from the consumer. Tell them exactly why you consider the product or service to be green. List all ingredients and explain the manufacturing process. Every company that claims to be green or sell green products should have a section on their website dedicated to explaining why their product or service is green.
- Be Specific: You can explain all day long why you are green, but it’s so easy to be vague and use platitudes to mask the fact that you aren’t really green. Give real examples and quantitative data about what makes you environmentally friendly.
- Reach Out To Your Community: If you are claiming to be a green company, then you should be involved in the community. Volunteer for eco-friendly projects, donate money to environmental organizations, and purchase carbon offsets. Your company is using a lot of energy and resources no matter how green your practices are, so the best way to offset that usage is to back to the environment.
- Black Up Your Claim: If someone challenges your claims, have research and proof to back it up.
- Avoid the “Lesser of Two Evils” approach: A good example of this is eco-friendly herbicides or pesticides. Using these chemicals, even if they are less harmful to the environment, are disturbing the natural order of the environment.
Hotels Going Green and RezHub Green Score Rating System
Are you a hotel manager/owner and thinking of improving the energy efficiency and sustainability of your hotel? The benefits are great, but you must watch yourself, because it’s very easy to fall into the trap of green washing. Our green score rating system is sophisticated enough to make sure hotels with green amenities are being evaluated fairly. Getting a high ranking is not easy, and we made it tough for a reason. Hotels shouldn’t be labeled “eco-friendly” unless they have a comprehensive green strategy. If you would like your hotel to be rated by our green score rating system, be sure to contact us. After January 1st, we will be rolling out an automated process for hotel managers and owners to log into our website and apply for a green score rating without manually contacting us. More details to come on that in the future.
