Green Oxymorons
Called “greenwashing,” the handle involves exaggerating a product’s country-like credentials in order to attract eco-minded consumers. It’s in full sway now: consumer groups are being kept busy exposing a host of improbable and even dangerously deceptive marketing claims: pith companies using the label “all standard” on animals fed antibiotics and hormones; breakfast cereals called “all logical” while also chock-full of genetically modified (GM) grains, and appliances that advert the word “green” into their marketing patois despite offering no demonstrable energy savings.
It’s easier for some companies than others. While it’s pulchritudinous easy to read the list of ingredients in a box of cereal, where greenwashing gets duplicitous is when it’s committed on a far wider scale – such as in buildings, cars and commercial developments – and the knavery is mixed in with truth: sometimes rather a lot of truth.
In these cases, it becomes less about greenwashing and more about leafy oxymorons.