Research

For my paper I want to deal with the newest trend of Going Green. Companies use terms like "organic" and "eco-friendly" to sell their products but what that really means to the seller and the consumers could be two different things. I think this is an interesting topic to go into because almost everywhere you go there are either items that are said to be recycled or eco-friendly and places where you can get your organic food and drinks.

This idea of "going Green" has become more of a trend than a step towards helping the environment. It also seems like many people fall into buying things that are "eco-friendly" as a way to ignore the fact that they could actually BE eco-friendly rather than just buying products as an easy way out.

I want to know what it really means to be organic and what other terms companies use to mislead the consumers about the quality of their food and the processes that go into its production. I also want to look deeper into food chains such as Whole Foods that use only organic foods to see if there are more benefits than consequences from supporting such places.

Another issue deals with places that claim to be getting their products from small farmers and urge people to support their local farmers. I would like to find out how places such as Whole Foods affects small farmers and their local businesses and where their products come from.

Overall, I want to find places and products that actually do benefit the environment and support/participate in recycling items. What I'd like to take away from researching this issue is finding out what we should stay away from in order to reduce pollution but more importantly, taking steps to change the way we consume and preventing ourselves from indirectly supporting the destruction of our atmosphere, earth, and economy.

I do think it matters what people buy but they should be more aware of what products are recycled and benefiting the environment instead of being misled by companies that claim to be helping the environment. Once searching for "green washing" I got thousands of hits so I think I'm going to go with this topic. I am still interested in researching the costs/benefits of organic foods but I don't know if I could fit all this in my topic. Something that caught my eye about Whole Foods is that even they are green washing their items and use descriptive words to describe each item to appeal to the consumers. Whole Foods also receives a large amount of their products from around the world. Even though the food is "organic" the company is still using airplanes to transport items across the world which is NOT environmentally beneficial.

I think I can focus on this issue of green washing and use examples like Whole Foods that claim to be helping out the small farmers and what not just to appeal to eco-friendly customers. The website that stood out to me is called "The Seven Sins of Greenwashing" which simply defines the misleading techniques that companies use. The seven sins are: Sin of Hidden Trade Off, Sin of No Proof, Sin of Vagueness, Sin of Irrelevance, Sin of Worshipping False Labels, Sin of the Lesser of the Two Evils, and the Sin of Fibbing. These "sins" can help guide me to decide whether or not a company is using green washing techniques to deceive us.