One of the recognized strategies for avoiding greenwashing is to tell the truth. The Federal Trade Commission recently charged four sellers of clothing and other textile products with deceptively labeling and advertising their items as made of bamboo fiber. A nice “green” claim - except when they are made of rayon. Whoops.
The complaints also charged the companies with making false and unsubstantiated “green” claims that their clothing and textile products were manufactured using an environmentally friendly process (making rayon can create a lot of environmental issues), that they retain the natural antimicrobial properties of the bamboo plant (which are lost in the rayon making process), and that they are biodegradable (rayon is not particularly biodegradable). Rayon is made of cellulose that can be derived from bamboo, but apparently, the companies could not even substantiate that claim.
The people that care enough about environmental claims to influence their purchasing decisions care about greenwashing. For a sustainable legal strategy, be certain any of your company’s claims are true, not misleading, and substantiated by competent and reliable scientific evidence.
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