Madison Avenue: Green thyself

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Christina Williams is the editor of Sustainable Business Oregon.

"I'll be the one in the suit."

David Mallen had only been in Portland a few hours but the New Yorker already knew that when we met for Stumptown coffee on a Friday morning that he was likely to be the only one there with a tie.

Mallen, the associate director for the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus was in town to meet with members of the Oregon Bar Association's Antitrust, Trade Regulation Section and brief them on what he's seeing in the landscape of green marketing claims — and, to some extent, enforcement.

Don't misconstrue, Mallen's organization doesn't actually enforce greenwashing, but it does do a lot of investigating green marketing claims and making recommendations for reform when the claims don't ring true.

While the Federal Trade Commission's updated Green Guides have received much attention in the last year, the FTC's actions against greenwashers have been few and far between.

Meanwhile, Mallen and his team have looked into some 20 cases where green claims have been called into question. For the most part, the cases come to the NAD's attention when competing companies question each other's claims. But it's the consumer's best interest that motivates the investigation and calling out a company when they're making advertising claims they can't back up — and Mallen believes that it's also better for businesses.

"Ultimately it's an incentive for them to — I'll say it — do the right thing," said Mallen.

In between checking claims of tooth whitening and the odor-supressing power of cat litter NAD has looked into claims about whether products are actually biodegradable or made with bamboo.

A review earlier this year took a close look at the "Fair Trade Certified" certification as it’s applied to personal care products.

In that case, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps questioned whether Avon could claim their product was "Fair Trade Certified" when only a tiny percentage of its ingredients are actually certifiable.

Bronner didn't like the NAD's decision on that one — Mallen's group suggested that clearer communication from TransFair USA, the organization behind the Fair Trade certification, would clear up the fact that in the personal care industry, only 2 percent to 5 percent of ingredients are required to be fair trade-sourced. There's an appeal pending on that one with the National Advertising Review Board.

Mallen is quick to give credit to the FTC — they're the ones going after fraudsters and winning money for consumers.

But the NAD's self-policing efforts are an important piece of the overall anti-greenwashing effort.

And in a world with increasingly skeptical consumers getting pummeled by ever louder — and, often, ever more dubious — green business claims, it's nice to know there's at least one organization in the advertising world that's keeping an eye on things.