PANAMA CITY — When you buy food or paper towels at the grocery store, do you see a “recycled” or “all-natural” label on it?
According to Jeanine Stratton, the label might not always mean a product is “green.”
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Stratton, an assistant professor of business at Furman University in South Carolina who specializes in human and consumer behavior, visited Florida State University Panama City recently to talk about “greenwashing.”
In a telephone interview a few days before her talk, Stratton said greenwashing can be defined as the “act of misleading consumers on the environmental impact” of a product. But defining what exactly is “green” can be hard, Stratton said during her campus presentation.
The lecture kicked off a two-day conference for the college’s Applied Behavior Analysis program, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary.
Students were on hand in the Holley Academic Center. Stratton handed out index cards for visitors to write down what “green” is to them and then trade them with others. Audience members were asked to read what was on the card they ended up with. Terms such as “eco-friendly,” “recycling” and “sustainability” were tossed out.
Stratton said that demonstrated the difficulty of defining what “green” means.
“One business may define it different from another,” she said.
Stratton has been studying product labels for the five years. She said it is up for debate how often greenwashing occurs, noting there is no standard regulation to determine if a product is green. During the FSU presentation, Stratton said the Food and Drug Administration had not developed a definition of “natural” in food.
Greenwashing is not always intended or egregious, she said. The question of greenwashing being legal but unethical was raised by Stratton, who went on to say that since 2009 the amount of products claiming to be green has increased.
Stratton also touched on chicken and egg products, noting the myriad of labels that might get attached to either, such as cage-free, range-free and certified organic. Third parties certify those products, and in getting certified the price goes up.
“Eggs are confusing,” Stratton said.
Just because a product doesn’t have a certified logo doesn’t make it bad, she said, but it helps if a business is transparent and specific with word choice in labels also helps.
“It’s not difficult to find green options,” Stratton said.