Topic Background

Greenwashing is a term used to describe the practice of companies twisting their products and policies to make them more environmentally friendly. Two ways they do this is by cutting costs cuts and the reductions in the use of resources. The term green comes from "Going Green", saving the environment and recycling. But what companies do is they make their product look more environmentally helpful. One way a company does this is by looks and wording. For example a company that has a toxic chemical in their product, they may put a tree on the label saying that safe to the environment. Having a tree on a bottle will more likely make the customer want to buy it because of the tree. Another term that environmentalists use to describe greenwashing is linguistic detoxification. This term is normally used when referring to when a name of a certain substance or toxic level is changed, it will less likely to consider a certain toxic. Having different wording can sometimes make the customer be more willing to purchase something that sounds okay to use.