Greenwashing

What is greenwashing?
Greenwashing refers to a marketing change in which a product is presented as being more environmentally friendly when no substantial effort has been made to do so. In a more extreme sense, greenwashing can refer to an attempt to make a product that is environmentally harmful appear environmentally friendly. Greenwashing alludes to a renewed consumer interest in protecting the environment.

There are two grades of greenwashing. In the weak form, it is just a company taking out loans for existing production methods as if they were influenced by an environmentally friendly mandate. For example, a software house can eliminate the shrink wrap on the packaging to save costs and then move on as a green initiative.

In the more extreme form, a company will lie directly about a product's environmental friendliness using vague phrasing ('best-in-class ecology') and packaging (green fields, flowers, etc.), questionable endorsements ('green certified by ecomaniacs ,) and so forth.