Eco-Buyer Beware: Green Can Be Deceiving

By Bryan Walsh. Sep. 22, 2008. TIME

Scot Case was not happy. Vice president of the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice, Case last year sent his researchers into a big-box(a large-size supermarket 沃尔玛之类的大超市外形像个大盒子) retail store to evaluate the green advertising claims of some of the products on its shelves. The results were startling(alarming, surprising): of the 1,018 products TerraChoice surveyed, all but one failed to live up fully to their green boasts. (if someone or something lives up to people's expectations or a particular standard, they are as good as they were expected to be比如He's striving to live up to his reputation as a world-class athlete.) Words like nontoxic(无毒的) were used in meaninglessly vague ways. Terms like Energy Star certified were in fact not backed up by certification.( Energy Star能源之星是美国政府上世纪90年代推出的节能标示体系，是美国能源部、环保、生产商 零售商、消费者和地方政府在全国形成一种共识，已成为一种节能环保标志。很多人开电脑屏幕一开始会看到一个以半个地球为背景的标志就是能源之星认证标志)

"I went ballistic,"(go ballistic口语,指 to become very angry and start shouting or behaving violently.) Case says. "I assumed the researchers had butchered(butcher动词,指make a mess, ruin; botch搞糟搞砸) the study." He had his team redo the survey, but the results came back the same. "It just shows we're awash in greenwash."(变化于brainwash洗脑,国内有人翻译成“漂绿”指公司在广告和营销中宣传自己产品的环保特性,但这些特性和宣扬根本经不起消费者的严密审查(也就是有虚假成分)的行为；这里awash和greenwash恰好押韵)

Many consumers may not have heard the term greenwashing, but they've surely experienced it--misleading marketing about the environmental benefits of a product. Greenwashing isn't new--ever since the environment emerged as an issue in the early 1970s, there have been advertising firms trying to convince consumers that buying Brand X(X这里代指任意品牌,某某品牌) is the only way to save the earth. But as going green has become big business--sales of organic products alone went from $10 billion in 2003 to more than $20 billion in 2007--companies appear eager to associate(associate…with…join together; connect..in one’s mind) themselves with the environment, deservedly(应该地,理所当然地) or not.

If you're not yet sick of(be sick (and tied) of…厌倦厌烦受够了;下文还有be fed up with..) seeing whirling wind turbines(风力涡轮机, 能将风能转换成机械、旋转能,由此带动发电机运行) and sun-dappled(有斑点的斑驳的) solar panels(太阳能电池板) on TV, you will be: the new fall season is likely to feature a flood of green advertising. It's gotten so bad that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC美国联邦贸易委员会) has been holding hearings(听证会) over the past year to define the difference between genuine environmental claims and empty(空洞的) greenwash. It's not easy--and environmental advocates worry that truly green companies could get lost in all the clamor(loud noise; to clamor for something= to demand something in a noisy or angry way).

"We have such a challenge ahead of us on climate change," says Kevin Tuerff, a co-founder of the marketing consultancy EnviroMedia. "Greenwashing harms the effort we need to be making."

The first step to cleaning up greenwashing is to identify it, and Tuerff and his partners have hit on(to discover or think of something) an innovative way to spotlight(原指聚光灯If something spotlights a problem or situation, it makes people notice the problem or situation and think about it) particularly egregious(正式用语指extremely and noticeably bad) examples. They've launched the Greenwashing Index www.greenwashingindex.com) a website that allows consumers to post ads that might be examples of greenwashing and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5--1 is a little green lie; 5 is an outright(彻底的完全的十足的) falsehood(谬误不实).

It's a simple device, but it shows the power of the Internet to truth-squad misleading ads (truth squad真相小分队，这里是当动词用揭开真相,所谓真相小分队是指立志揭示查明某一事情人物背后真相的一群人;比如We're going to truth squad some of the claims with our science correspondent.); with a simple Web search, any consumer can find out if a car manufacturer hyping its fuel-efficient hybrids actually earns the majority of its revenue selling gas-guzzling(车辆等耗油大的gas guzzler油老虎车辆) trucks and SUVs. "We try to make it a little more transparent(原指透明的,后比喻容易看得明白认得出，透明没有秘密隐藏的;半透明的translucent) with the index," says Kim Sheehan, a communications professor at the University of Oregon and a co-founder of the site. "It teaches people to be a little more cautious about the claims they hear."

Googling isn't the only way to take out the greenwashing, however. The TerraChoice website www.terrachoice.com offers a list of what it calls the "six sins of greenwashing"--six simple signs that should tip off consumers (to warn someone secretly about something that will happen so that they can take action or prevent it from happening) to a company that is more interested in selling the earth than saving it. One is the sin of irrelevance, in which, for example, a product trumpets the fact that it is "chlorofluorocarbon free (CFC氯氟烃；氯氟碳气体便是大家都熟悉的氟利昂;这里的free是无…不含…;无铅汽油lead-free gas或unleaded petrol) "--even though those ozone(臭氧)-destroying chemicals have been banned for years, meaning the company is asking for applause for just following the law. Another is the sin of the hidden trade-off(a trade-off is a situation where you make a compromise between two things or where you exchange all or part of one thing for another)--the paper towels that come from a sustainably harvested forest but are then shipped to global markets aboard CO2-spewing(spew喷吐) trucks and planes.(这里是在说有些产品虽然说非常环保或者出自可持续来源，但运输原料产品的卡车飞机却是烧油排废气，对环境造成危害)

Ultimately, says Case, "if you don't understand where a green claim comes from, check it out. There are a lot of companies trying to relieve people of the green(这里不是指环保而是指美元，因为是绿色的) in their wallet."

It's not just consumers in the U.S. who are getting fed up with greenwashing. The Advertising Standards Authority in Britain received 561 complaints about potentially false green ads last year, up from 117 the year before. Norway has banned all car ads from using the terms green, environmentally friendly and clean on the grounds that(后接从句，指基于…的理由原因) all cars contribute to global warming. (受到contribution的影响，这个短语往往被翻译误解成“对……做贡献”，其实这里就是help to cause；并非一定要褒义的“贡献”，本句就不能翻译成贡献)

The laissez-faire(源自法语，指放任自由) U.S. isn't likely to go that far(指做某事达到一定的程度,本句是说喜欢放任自由的美国不可能和挪威一样禁止在汽车广告中使用“环保绿色”等字眼), but the FTC is in the process of updating its Green Guide for consumers, which hasn't changed since 1998. The hope is that eventually we'll be able to define green in advertising the way we've defined low calorie and low fat. That needs to happen soon, before green loses all meaning. "We have better green products but a lot of exaggerated(exaggerate夸大夸张) claims," says Case. "That could be enough to capsize(原指船倾覆，这里比喻倾覆颠覆) the whole green movement"--and that's not a little green lie.