Saturday, September 27, 2008

Futerra's Greenwash Guide


If you run a "green" business, you probably want to avoid the pitfalls of greenwashing. And if you're a consumer of "green" products and services, you probably want to avoid the pitfalls of buying into greenwashing.

Luckily, the London-based sustainablility communications firm Futerra has released a very thorough guide to greenwashing, describing what it is and how to avoid being perceived as a greenwasher yourself (assuming your green efforts are in earnest, of course!).

Download the Greenwash Guide here.

It's a helpful resource to be sure, although I have one criticism: I think some of their graphic design, with it's pseudo-hand-drawn graphs and charts, might fall into the realm of hand-washing...?

[via LOHAS]

Posted by Amy Shaw for Greenjeans.
Image sourced here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Amy,

handwashing is a great term - there's certainly a lot of it out there. I work for Futerra and I have to leap to the defence of one of our lovely designers Emily who hand drew all the graphs and stats in the guide. But you're right, there's a real danger of handcrafted design losing its aesthetic value.

If the guilty companies had values (or acted according to the ones they profess to have) they wouldn't have to resort to any kind of 'washing'. As it is they just make it harder for those of us who do have principles to stand out... It's the reason why we wrote the greenwash guide - cynical (lazy or ignorant) companies and marketeers ruin it for everyone.

Henry

Greenjeans said...

Thank you for your comment, Henry. I love the hand-drawn graphics and are glad to know they're made by a person and not some sort of computer program. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference these days...

Thanks for clearing it up!

- Amy