What do all these words have in common there the past few years have seen a huge boom in searches for environmentally friendly products and services, which on the one hand is amazing because it means individuals care more than ever about the planet.

As a result, it's led to a massive industry and the rise of green marketing or greenwashing, some of which is specifically designed to trick consumers in order to simply sell more products, but no more.

It's time to call them out.

With studies over the last 10 years have found that 90% of products in big box retailers throughout Canada, the US Australia and the UK fall into one of these seven categories, which might be catching your attention when you're shopping but not exactly living up to the standards.

You hope they are.

First up, we have.

This is when a company highlights the importance of fixing one environmental issue while potentially hiding a more concerning one.

Let's take nestle for example, Oh, nestle, the company that takes water from my hometown's aquifer wrapped in plastic and sells it around the world.

The company that took spring water 120 miles from flint michigan for their water bottles while michigan was suffering a major lead contamination water crisis.

How cute!

And as one of the world's largest water bottle manufacturers, you can imagine they're also one of the largest global polluters of single use plastic, wow.

In fact, a 2017 beach cleanup in the Philippines found nestle products, the most common brand of litter now.

Nestle in the meantime has made a pledge that by 2025 100% of their packaging will be recyclable and reusable.

Amazing.

Finally, one of the world's largest polluters of single use plastic is taking a stand except they're not really of the 20,000 water bottles bought globally every minute, less than half of those are recycled, which means that more than 10,000 bottles bought every minute end up in a landfill or the ocean and take about hundreds of years to completely degrade.

And even if nestle does hit that fully recyclable target, it's worth noting that the world literally does not have the infrastructure in place to recycle all these bottles.

Most recently in 2018 china's national sword policy banned the import of most plastics, which means that millions of recycled materials from the U.

S.

Are simply becoming waste.

Companies like nestle market one angle like recycle ability without acknowledging or taking responsibility for the fact that there currently is no way to recycle all these products up next, which is when organizations make environmental claims that they have no evidence for it happens all the time.

Let's take Nest labs as an example, one of the biggest producers of thermostats which eventually became google nest In 2013 nest labs claimed that nest thermostats were the most environmentally friendly product in comparison to their competitors, which is great except for the fact that they had no proof for this claim and were later forced to remove it when they were investigated.

And this is the tough part about companies making false claims because we often don't know as consumers until it's too late.

A lot of these companies seem to operate on ask for forgiveness, not permission.

If a company does make a claim, the best we can do is verify that it's backed by some government body or reputable organization, which is trash pun intended because it puts all the onus on the consumer to research every single product they buy.

This is where all the cute new catchphrases fall under like green or eco friendly in Canada greenwashing is technically illegal.

For example, the term all natural must not a include added vitamins, minerals, nutrients, artificial flavors or food additives, be have anything removed other than water.

See go through any processes that significantly alter the original physical chemical or biological state, which sounds good on paper.

Except there's a loophole where companies can stay made with natural flavors.

If just one of the flavors they mention is natural while every other ingredient in their product is artificial or synthetic and that's at least partially regulated here.

Meanwhile, words like environmentally friendly or ethical are much more vague and meaningless and in many parts of the world, no legal ramifications actually exists.

So if a company isn't explaining exactly how they're more environmentally friendly or what they're comparing it to because remember everything we make has an environmental cost, they're likely just using words to sell a product to, you know, but the soft, blue and green packaging with pictures of nature and look at the little birdie and and the cute bears.

It must be environmentally friendly, nope, not likely.

While the FTC in America has had green guides for businesses since 1992 they're not legally binding though.

Some states like California now do have eco labeling laws to protect consumers.

Similarly, the UK doesn't have specific anti greenwashing laws, but misleading claims can fall under consumer protection laws, packaging that focuses on what's not in the product can often be a red flag as it's often used to distract you from the actual ingredient list.

While in cosmetics, they often focus on one specific natural ingredient to give the illusion that the other ingredients are not harmful to you or the planet is when an environmental claim is not helpful or relevant.

For example, chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, which can be used as refrigerants are banned in 197 countries across the world because of their environmental impact.

And yet companies still find the need to emphasize that products are CFC free in an attempt to appear as if they're taking responsibility for protecting the environment.

In reality, CFC isn't present in their product because it's illegal and that's a good thing.

The CFC ban helped protect the ozone and reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically in the past two decades, but with HFC now replacing CFC there is a risk that it's not regulated enough and could do similar damage and that's why it's still important that we put research and regulations around alternative solutions as well.

And it's frustrating to see companies hijacking the ignorance of consumers just so they can have a marketing talking point that is ultimately the bare minimum legally, when a slightly less harmful product is created in an environmentally harmful field, it's often touted very loudly, for example, when you see cars labeled as more fuel efficient, that's great on the one hand, but the cars are still adding significantly to C.

02 emissions worldwide in 2019, transportation accounted for 29% of us greenhouse gas emissions alternatives are awesome, but they can still be harmful to the environment, which is why it's important to remember that sometimes reducing or completely minimizing our use of services and products is actually the most impactful thing we can do as the name suggests, is outright false claims by corporations.

Vehicle manufacturers have been the most recent culprits in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency found that Volkswagen used emission cheating software when external testing took place in their facilities to ensure that diesel vehicles emitted less gas and appeared cleaner than other vehicles, but Volkswagen isn't alone, Mercedes Chevrolet and ford have also been found guilty of using emissions cheating software to bypass inspections and this is where we have to demand regulations and way stricter penalties for companies that make these kind of fake claims.

It's hard enough to find environmental alternatives without the added layer of companies straight up lying to our faces and then really only facing a slap on the wrist or a minor fine.

We promise not to repeat a decades long scam on consumers ever again.

We swear nobody in the company knew this is related to the hundreds of third party certification and claims given to products with no real guarantee.

The claims are true.

Of course there are some labels that are audited and more legitimate than others.

But as an example in one research study, a product of paper towels had a certification that said fights global warming.

There needs to be a huge emphasis on reputation for third party verification because a lot of these third party organizations claim they'll verify but don't do often enough.

And as a consumer, how are we supposed to understand the legitimacy of every single label that could possibly be slapped on the product?

We can't.

So what can you do?

Okay, so this was a law and it might sound a little dooming gloom.

Sorry about that.

Ad these sins on top of the fact that we hear about cotton tote bags creating less waste, but more C.

02 than plastic bags or electric vehicles only being more environmentally friendly when the local grid they're on is also using renewable energy and not just creating that electricity from fossil fuels or the fact that the lithium mining of their batteries is related to the destruction of freshwater supplies and fish or how ride sharing apps claim to be part of the solution by streamlining transportation but only added more vehicle miles than ever.

It can sometimes feel like there's no hope and no matter what we do, we lose.

Not to mention straws getting so much attention.

But obviously there are genuine, major efforts by some corporations and brands to not only minimize their impact but actually create more sustainable products.

So how do we know what to support?

The shitty part of the answer is to be more informed yourself, which I know is not scalable and puts the onus on you instead of the corporations who should be bearing the responsibility.

But if it's something you care about now it's a place to start.

Long term we need to engage socially and politically.

I know for some people the word regulation might make you cringe, especially our american followers for some reason, but it works.

Remember its regulation that made cigarette companies admit and openly show that they're bad for your health even when they swore up and down, they weren't.

It was the Montreal protocol that helped establish an international treaty to help protect the ozone layer.

This is what projections looked like with and without the protocol, the world's largest manufacturer of tissue paper Kimberly clark destroyed mass amounts of boreal forest in Canada, which was home to almost a million indigenous people.

In response.

The clear cut campaign began and in 2011, a policy change took place that forced the company to purchase pulp outside the boreal forest.

Now must be approved by the Forest stewardship Council, which is a third party organization that validates safe environments.

The keystone pipeline XL is one of the biggest climate change stories of the past decade, concern about damage to indigenous lands, oil spills, damaging the environment and the drilling of oil sands led to the State Department in the US creating a report That stated the environment was at little risk for harm.

But the strange part about this report was that the authors had their names removed and when the names were finally revealed, it was shown that a lot of these members were responsible for approving other pipelines.

This conflict of interest was hidden to prove that the pipeline had little to no risk.

In reality it was very dangerous for the environment.

The protests against the pipeline got so big.

In 2011, there was a span of two weeks in front of the White House where 1,253 arrests were made.

Where are we with the pipeline today?

The great news is after a decade long fight, Transcanada has canceled the pipeline project.

It can be a slog and take a long time, but when we stand up to corporations and the government to protect the environment, they have to listen.

These companies aren't willingly going to sacrifice their profits for the betterment of humanity, so we need to make them and that starts by supporting or joining efforts or movements to impact our laws, an effort to protect the environment.

I hope this video while calling out the echo fakes of the world can also provide a little bit of hope.

Yes, there will always be intentional scam artists.

But knowing that every single day more individuals are caring about the environment, taking a stand in their own life and making their voice be heard gives me a lot of hope in the long run.

We've seen a lot of great examples of what happens when people stand up and I think we're going to see a lot more.

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