Don’t be fooled by so called “environmentally friendly” products | WindowArt

Environmentally friendly products are a dime a dozen nowadays. Going green is so trendy that marketers across many different industries are plastering environmentally friendly claims across their products as part of a hard sell to get the consumer to buy. This is called ‘greenwashing’ – a marketing spin playing to the wants and needs of the new green consumer.

To greenwash a product is not a difficult task as it is simply the exercise of implying environmental responsibility.

In some cases, the products that do in fact have environmentally responsible qualities are marketed as safe and green, but their environmentally responsible quality is negated by the number of other unsafe and non-green qualities or ingredients they also contain.

Homeowners looking to go green in their houses are in danger of investing in home installations that appear to be environmentally friendly, but really they aren’t.

Often new homeowners are interested in the idea of creating an environmentally friendly home and will seek out green installations or products to use in their new house. The intention and idea is on track but because your average green homeowner or consumer is still fairly naïve to what green really means, they tend to invest in products that fall short of this promise.

For instance, many homeowners use rubber mulch in their gardens. This is considered sustainable landscaping as it uses 100% recycled rubber and the recycling of rubber from tyres is a critical environmental issue. The problem is that health concerns have been documented in the factory workers who work in tyre manufacturing plants. The health problems are attributed directly to the workers being exposed to the chemicals and dusts produced from the manufacturing of the tyre. By placing recycled tyre shreds in a home garden you are repeatedly exposing your family and pets to those very same chemicals and toxins.

We recently wrote a blog that questions whether your green home installations were in fact legit – read the blog  here and in this blog we discussed the use of bamboo. Bamboo has become an extremely popular environmentally friendly home installation. However, unless you live in China – which is the country richest in bamboo resources – the effort and logistics involved in getting bamboo into your home go against the idea of being environmentally friendly.

Ethanol fuel is another area of debate. It is considered a renewable fuel source that helps us consume less oil and therefore it is an environmentally friendly choice. However, farmlands then become used for producing ethanol instead of food and considering the plight of world hunger it is not wise to dedicate farmlands to anything else except food production.

You can create an environmentally friendly home if you have the right information on hand.

These are only a few supposedly environmentally friendly products that aren’t as green as you may think. For future reference, here are some tips on spotting a product that has been greenwashed. To turn your home into a green abode check out our Guide to Green Building your Home where we discuss truly environmentally friendly ways in which to create an eco-friendly den.

Image credit: http://cleantechies.com/

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