A Consumer's Guide to Greenwashing

Why all this green pretense? Put simply: It sells. “Sustainability really matters to people today, so companies are twisting themselves in knots to try to demonstrate that the product they’re selling is sustainable and matches our values,” says Todd Paglia, executive director of the international nonprofit environmental group Stand.earth. 

In a PwC survey of more than 20,000 consumers in 31 countries last year, 46 percent said that they are buying more sustainable products. And a nationally representative March 2025 CR survey of 2,291 U.S. adults found that 40 percent of Americans are willing to pay more for a product that claims to be green, eco-friendly, or safe for the environment. 

Meanwhile, government regulators are doing little to stem all the greenwashing, experts say. “Reporting and transparency requirements on a corporation’s impacts on the environment are being weakened, so there’s not a lot to prevent companies from just saying whatever they want about their products,” says Sara Enright, CR’s senior director of safety and sustainability.

At the most basic level, greenwashing matters because it prevents consumers from making informed buying decisions. 

But experts say its effects are far more widespread and corrosive. “If an established company is effectively misleading consumers about its sustainability efforts, it can prevent smaller, legitimately sustainable competitors from operating in the same market,” says Wren Montgomery, a professor of sustainability at Ontario’s Ivey Business School and co-founder of the research hub Greenwash Action Lab. “It could even lead a competing company to decide to greenwash because they see that it’s just easier to slap a green label on a product than to actually do the hard work it takes to be sustainable.” 

Kris Hartley, an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability, says that the mistrust greenwashing engenders can spread well beyond just the company making the false claims. “If consumers are not convinced that governments are doing enough to prevent greenwashing, and the press is doing enough to expose it, and the courts are doing enough to prosecute it, we may see declining public trust in those institutions as well.” 

A consumer’s best defense against false or misleading sustainability claims is to be able to recognize them. Greenwashing takes many forms, however, so it helps to understand some of the most common versions. 

No proof. “Probably the most common form of greenwashing is making environmental claims but providing no documentation to back them up,” says Hamish van der Ven, assistant professor of sustainable business management of natural resources at Canada’s University of British Columbia. “It’s pretty easy for a company to claim on a label something like 100 percent of its packaging is recycled, without providing any third-party accreditation or a link where consumers can learn exactly what the company is doing to reclaim solid waste.” 

Broad or vague terms. “Words like ‘all-natural,’ ‘eco-friendly,’ ‘clean,’ ‘green,’ and ‘sustainable,’ that have no clear meaning, should be a big red flag,” Montgomery says. “People often think a company has to meet some requirement to use these words, but they don’t.” Hartley recommends looking out for anything exceedingly optimistic, ambiguous, or lacking in qualifying claims. “HSBC got in trouble with regulators in the U.K. for using catchy phrases like ‘Climate Change Doesn’t Do Borders’ in an advertising campaign without being forthcoming about the fact that as a global bank its financing activities can be linked to unsustainable activities around the world,” he says. 

Misleading symbols. Some companies use symbols, images, or even packaging to signal that a product is sustainable without making any explicit claim. Think of bottled water with a dense, green pine forest pictured on its polymer film wraparound label or even a hybrid vehicle that uses a lightning bolt in its promotional materials to overemphasize how much it runs on electricity. “It could be images of birds or a flower or a bee—or even just using that sort of rough, raw brown paper wrapping,” Montgomery says. “Anything that could signal to people that something is environmentally friendly without actually saying so is probably greenwashing.” 

Shining the spotlight only where a company wants people to look. “Fashion brands, like all companies, are going to great lengths to convince us how sustainable they are, even when their clothes are made out of petroleum products,” Paglia says. “For example, a shoe company will make and sell 1,000 pairs of shoes with a little logo made out of plant-based leather. That’s groovy and sustainable and worth millions of dollars in green press—but it doesn’t represent what the company actually produces.”

Carbon offsets and carbon neutrality. Many companies claim to “offset” a portion of the greenhouse gases they generate, or even to have achieved "carbon neutrality," meaning they supposedly used offsets to eliminate all emissions related to the production of their products or the delivery of services. But not all carbon offset projects are equally effective: A company that claims to plant a tree for every purchase you make is not as credible in its dedication to the environment as a company that purchases high-quality carbon credits. The latter adhere to recognized standards like the Verified Carbon Standard or Gold Standard or secure third-party validation, which show the company is trying to ensure the carbon credits represent a lasting reduction or elimination of greenhouse gases that would not have otherwise taken place.

Experts emphasize that while forestry projects can play a role in reducing carbon in the atmosphere, trees sequester carbon only temporarily—and thus are not a substitute for reducing emissions at the source. “If you’re a corporate emitter of greenhouse gases, you cannot offset the thousands of years they stay in the atmosphere by planting or protecting trees—full stop,” says John Kostyack, a climate and environmental policy consultant and an adviser to the Sierra Club’s Sustainable Finance campaign. “I love trees. They are really important stores of carbon. But let’s not overstate what they can do for us.”  

In an ideal world, consumers could rely on package labeling to help them identify goods that are legitimately sustainable, much as they can rely on nutritional data and the ingredients list when shopping for food. 

But most of the ecolabels that festoon product packaging aren’t strictly regulated, making them yet one more hurdle consumers must confront when trying to make sustainable choices. 

“I research ecolabels for a living and when I go to the supermarket I’m still routinely stumped by a label I’ve never seen before,” van der Ven says. During a recent shopping trip to Costco, he recalls: “I picked up a package of coffee and it had four ecolabels on it, including one I’d never seen.” 

Still, these and other experts say, certain third-party certifications can offer a measure of assurance that a company’s environmental claims are legitimate. “I don’t think you can trust what any company tells you. Too many of them are freeriding on people’s desire to protect the environment,” says Kostyack. “You need to look for ecolabels from respected third-party reviewers.”

The following third-party certifications are among those that many experts say consumers can trust to indicate that a company is taking meaningful actions to reduce its impact on the environment and to create sustainable products. 

“Companies are listening very carefully to consumers,” Montgomery says. “If we can put our dollars where our values are by purchasing products that are legitimately more sustainable, they will shift in that direction.” 

In addition to looking for the ecolabels above, here are some things you can do to make sure your purchases are really more sustainable and to reduce your impact on the environment.  

Buy less. “You cannot shop your way out of climate change, even when you’re buying yoga pants marketed as more sustainable,” Montgomery says. “If you want to reduce your impact on the environment, buy less.”

Buy stuff that will last. “A product’s reliability and sustainability are closely linked,” says Arizona State’s Hartley. “The longer the lifespan of a product, the lower the rate of replacement and waste.” Use CR’s ratings to make sure you’re buying cars and appliances that are reliable and won’t need to be replaced for a very long time. 

Consider fixing things before replacing them. You can use CR’s interactive Repair or Replace tool to learn whether repairing an appliance makes more economic sense than buying a new one.

Use CR for advice on the best eco-friendly cars, appliances, and other products. And for tips on ways to be more green, like reducing waste and recycling. Our Guide to Sustainable Living is a good place to start and includes links to advice, tools, and product recommendations. This article on the best eco-friendly washing machines of 2025, for example, identifies models that both excelled in CR’s lab testing and received our Green Choice designation. And here’s a CR guide to reading EnergyGuide labels, those familiar (and federally mandated) yellow-and-black tags you see attached to many major appliances.

Be especially strategic when shopping for a car. Buy the most efficient vehicle that meets your needs, recommends Chris Harto, senior transportation and energy policy analyst at CR. If you’re shopping for a new car, keep an eye out for vehicles that have earned CR’s Green Choice designation. Check out this article about the best green cars you can buy right now or this one about vehicles with the best fuel economy overall. And our hybrid/EV buying guide can help you figure out which types of efficient vehicles make the most sense for you. 

Research your fashion choices. The apparel industry is one of the most polluting and generates about the same amount of greenhouse gases annually as France, Germany, and the U.K. combined. Stand.earth’s Fossil-free Fashion Scorecard grades major fashion brands on five key sustainability metrics and gives each an overall score (the brand at the head of the class may surprise you).

Research companies using the Net Zero Tracker. Created by four international environmental nonprofits and academic organizations, including University of Oxford, the Net Zero Tracker evaluates four key metrics that indicate a company’s progress toward its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s widely respected by sustainability experts and provides an overview of the 2,000 largest publicly traded companies in the world by revenue. 

Tell companies you want more information and transparency about their green claims. “If you’re unsure about a company’s claims, or want to see more proof, ask for it,” suggests CR’s Enright. “Companies that are trying to reduce the environmental harm of their operations should be able to communicate clearly about their efforts. Those that don’t may, in fact, be greenwashing.”