I’m excited to announce that I will be speaking on the subject of “Greenwashing” at the PSFK Conference in New York City tomorrow in Union Square. The conference is about new marketing trends and ideas, and my particular panel, entitled “Eco-shift or Greenwash” will be moderated by Tamara Giltsoff, who works for OZOcar and writers for Treehugger.com. The other folks on my panel are Hemal Vasavada-Gill (TheEightfold.com) and Marc Alt (MAP & AIGA).
I probably should have announced this conference last week when tickets were still available – as the event is
sold out now. Fortunately, however, for any of you who are interested in greenwashing and who can’t make this panel discussion, we will be broadcasting a video of the conversation on Inhabitat. So stayed tuned – and if any of you have thoughts / comments / questions about greenwashing for the panel tomorrow, please feel free to comment here on this post, or send them in to me.
+PSFK Conference
To what extent do trendy, attention grabbing products, whether via celebrity endorsement, good design, or some other means, cast a shadow on the greenness (or lack thereof) of a product. Stated otherwise, is there a danger of mainstream consumers being mislead into believing that products are green (when they are not) due to innovative design or celebrity endorsement.
Just an idea: wouldn’t it be useful and increase awareness if products stated the carbon footprint it leaves? We’ve already got in on most household appliances like washing machines, freezers, etc. Why not on more day-to-day products? As an example: people using ever more aggresive cleaning products without sparing a thought as to how harmful these new products are to the environment. I know it would make a lot of people rethink their purchase if it was made clear on a scale of 1 to X how harmful it really is.
Eva
PS: Had to get this pet-peeve out of my system..
Maybe the oncept of ‘beyond advertising’ could be raised ? Are we all so cmfortably ensconced in ‘a matrix’ of advertising bombardment that we must avidly await the next wave of Ad -stimuli toof advertising to green our choices ? Wouldn’t it be a evolutionary idea to espouse True Value as the fundamental in promoting various ‘products’ ? If this became the foucus of ‘Green Washing’, I’d be totally for it. Is ‘Green Wash’ the new ‘Brain Wash’ ? Is that the point here ? I hope not.
Dear Jill-
I would be VERY interested in getting a copy of that video and/or a transcript. I’m a science educator at the Museum of Science in Boston, with the daily challenge of helping the public sort good from bad information.
Something I would love to see as a product of your discussions—guidelines for how one can discern a true Eco-shift ethos from a Green-washing one. There’s alot of superficial or downright deceptive “green” initiatives out there, and the public could use some yardstaicks for measuring fact versus crap.
Hipe it goes well…sounds terrifically interesting!
Cheers!
Sue
I’m with Sue S – I’d love to get my hands on the video for my class that I’m teaching called “Design & Social Change” – I plan to address green washing, and would also like to see some guidelines for identifying the real thing.
Thanks.
Melissa