Masuk Free Press

Over recent years, buying eco-conscience products has been on the rise as people learn more and more about climate change. In response, many brands have been trying out ways to make and advertise products that are more sustainable. However, some brands try to capitalize on this and greenwash their products. 

But what is greenwashing? According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, greenwashing is defined as “the act of making false or misleading statements about the environmental benefits of a product or practice.”

In 2025, SHEIN was fined $1.16M by the Italian Government. The cause? Greenwashing. The brand was investigated for a marketing campaign that had misleading claims about the environment and sustainability. According to The Guardian, “Shein details its “evoluSHEIN” roadmap on its website as including three strategic pillars: ‘Equitable Empowerment (People), Collective Resilience (Planet) and Waste-Less Innovation (Process).’” 

However, this is not the brand’s first offense. Many people criticized the brand for possible greenwashing when they launched SHEIN exchange, a program where their customers could resell their old SHEIN items. The website for SHEIN exchange, claims, “Not only will you get to re-invent your closet, but you’ll also be contributing to a circular fashion movement that lowers our impact on the planet.” Yet, according to Yale Climate Connections, in 2024 SHEIN became the largest polluter in fast fashion, after almost doubling their emissions from the year prior. If companies advertise the idea of eco-friendliness, but prove the opposite, what is the consumer meant to think? 

Greenwashing is a misuse of the desire to shop more eco-friendly. It is not just SHEIN; many brands, even some of the most well-renowned, have greenwashed. We all know that it’s essential to do our part in being more eco-friendly, yet it is still all too common for brands to take advantage of that.  Brands should try to help and improve our quality of shopping, not make us think that purchasing these ‘eco-friendly’ products are helping, even when they aren’t. From clothes to makeup and even food, greenwashing has infiltrated marketing for all different products. 

Even something as simple as food can get greenwashed. Foods like produce and chicken are affected in many cases. “For instance, as far as agriculture goes, if you talk about, let’s say, cage-free chickens, it sounds good. It sounds like the chickens are out there in the field and have all the room they want, but that’s not what it means at all. They can still only have one square foot to themselves; it just means they’re exposed to other chickens,” said Masuk biology teacher, Peter Lopuch. “Sounds good; not necessarily good for the chickens.” 

In another example, he talks about blueberries in particular. “If you’re talking about organic produce, for instance, organic blueberries are allowed to be grown in containers in soil-less conditions on top of black plastic,” said Lopuch. “You think organic is something that’s caring for the entire environment, that’s not the case with anything that’s USDA labeled as organic,”

Even massive brands have shown greenwashing in their advertisements. In an article by The Guardian, which cites a report from The Changing Markets Foundation, “Coca-Cola, the report says, has spent millions promoting an innovation which says that its bottles are 25% marine plastic, but does not mention that the company is the world’s biggest plastic polluter.” 

For a company as big as The Coca-Cola Company, although they are taking the initiative to try and do better, these efforts are reduced by the pollution that comes from them. Things like this create a disconnect between the producer and the consumer, while many people are simply seeking to buy more eco-friendly products. 

Masuk Spanish teacher, Anne Spoerndle, said, “I try to buy anything that can help improve our life rather than harm the environment.” Among people in general, consciously choosing to be more environmentally friendly seems important, especially when shopping and the option is provided. 

“I look out for things that are eco-friendly, vegan and cruelty-free when I’m shopping,” said sophomore Trisha Srikanth. “I definitely keep a list in my head about what brands greenwash to keep myself conscious and almost boycott them in my own type of way, because I don’t support greenwashing at all. I think it’s pointless. If you’re saying you’re climate-friendly and then you’re not, it cancels out, so there’s no point in even saying you are.”

Greenwashing makes our collective efforts to do better by the environment a huge inconvenience, as it is selling people a hope that their shopping habits are becoming more eco-friendly; when in reality, this may not be true for every brand. 

“I think that it’s deceptive towards the customer, because these companies end up spending more money on advertising something as ‘green’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ rather than actually using sustainable practices,” said junior Aiza Mufiti. “I personally value a product actually being sustainable and find that a very important reason when buying products myself.”

In an anonymous survey conducted by Harris Pole for Google Cloud, with 1,491 company executives, 68% of US executives admit to using greenwashing tactics. This number is drastically different from what you should expect from companies. 

“People trying to buy environmentally friendly products is such an amazing initiative, and it’s just sad that companies take advantage of this and shine a negative light on it,” said Mufiti.

Though some brands use greenwashing to promote their products to appeal to more consumers, there are still successful businesses that don’t. In malls all across America, LUSH is setting a high bar for sustainability. From packaging to listing their practices on the website, the brand has shown their commitment. On their website’s environmental policy tab, they show transparency and effort to be as eco-friendly as possible. They list their policy on packaging, raw materials, waste and recycling, energy, water, and communication.

“Our passion is to get rid of packaging when designing a product. We use as little packaging in the shops as possible and give you the choice to go completely naked; we mean the products, not yourselves. About half of our products can be taken home with no packaging,” states their website. “When packaging is unavoidable, we prefer to use recycled materials. 90%, by weight, of our packaging material is recycled and we’re working on the remaining 10%.”

While shopping, most people probably aren’t looking into a brand’s history and statistics every time they buy something, nor should they have to. Nobody wants to spend their shopping time looking into the research of a company to trust them, which would not even be necessary if brands did not greenwash. Not only this, but brands like LUSH show how it’s not impossible to be eco-friendly and sustainable. Brands: listen to your consumers. We don’t want fake promises or designs that look eco-friendly. We want things that are actually eco-friendly. Leave any remnants of greenwashing back in 2025!