Seeing through the greenwashing whiteout

I am trying to find some tiny shred of existence that has not been “greened” by The Marketers. My desperation is so great that I recently turned to escapist television shows that seemed likely candidates. For example, I tuned in to Gossip Girl, the CW Television Network’s most popular show. How refreshing it was that the obscenely wealthy and attractive high schoolers at an exclusive Manhattan private school cared only about sex, clothes and money.

However, during a commercial break I went to Google and typed in “Green Gossip Girl.” It turns out The Marketers have steeped even this show, my last hope, in green.

For example, the divorced—from two different billionaires—mother of one of the high school stars, actress Kelly Rutherford, has a video interview on the Washington Post’s sprig.com Web site (for which the tag line is “suburban people are into green”).  “Kelly Rutherford —super green star of Gossip Girl—sat down with Sprig celebrity host Jac Chebatoris to talk about her very eco-friendly lifestyle, going green on the set of her hit show and how she plans to save some cash for her next Birkin Bag. Check out the latest in energy-saving gossip here,” gushes the text accompanying the video.

Watching Ms. Rutherford, sweet as she is, talk about compact fluorescent light bulbs made me want to cry. Falling further into solipsism, I typed “green bullshit” into Google and got 4.7 million results, including a multitude of blogs on how basically nothing that claims to be green really is.

My situation, while perhaps extreme, is not unique. Late last year the firm Ipsos Reid did a study which said that 70 percent of Americans either strongly or somewhat agree that “when companies call a product ‘green’ (meaning better for the environment), it is usually just a marketing tactic.”

A study released in mid-June of this year by the Natural Marketing Institute says that consumers are experiencing what it calls “Greenwashing whiteout.” NMI states: