Dreaming of a green Christmas?

Consumer thirst for clearer eco-labelling must not translate into greenwashing at the checkout

Adam Corner
guardian.co.uk, Sunday December 7 2008 16.00 GMT

Christmas is a time for giving – but in order to give, we must first consume. Even in the middle of the most profound economic downturn since the 1930s, UK consumers will spend (according to new figures from Deloitte) somewhere in the region of £655 each this Christmas. The tiny, indecipherable plastic blobs that will fall from crackers across the country on Christmas day speak volumes about the nature of this annual spike in retail figures: Christmas consumption need not be rooted in necessity. In fact, according to Alistair Darling, the only thing necessary this Christmas is that the country keeps on consuming, as cash-strapped shoppers are encouraged to do their bit for the bankers' dwindling bonuses.
But is our beloved festival of Christian-inspired secular celebration really that shallow? Increasingly, consumers are asking where their products come from, how they got here, and what their carbon footprint is. And in response to this greening of consumer choice, the process of Christmas consumption has been rebranded. From energy-efficient fairy lights to recycled wrapping paper, Christmas need no longer be simply an orgy of single-use decorations and gaudy over-packaging. Green consumers can have their Christmas cake and eat it – or can they?
There is a bewildering array of own-brand eco-labelling awaiting unwary consumers in the shops this Christmas. From Kenco's Rainforest Alliance partnership, to the Waitrose local food stamp, everyone wants a piece of the green pound. Wading into this crowded marketplace, the government's Carbon Trust has developed a Carbon Reduction Label. By conducting a lifecycle analysis, individualised carbon footprints are calculated and consumers can, in theory, opt for the most environmentally friendly product.
However, a forthcoming report by the Future Foundation and the Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability and Society (Brass) at Cardiff University suggests that consumer awareness and understanding of the Carbon Reduction label is low.
It may be only a matter of time before the public begin to learn and trust the Carbon Reduction label. Or it may be that the unsettling number of own-brand eco-labels has created a knowledge vortex, where consumer choices are sucked in, whirled around impressively, and escorted gently through the checkout – greener and shinier than before.
To understand why there might be a certain amount of public distrust of eco-labelling schemes, consider what the environmental marketing company TerraChoice describe as the "six sins of greenwashing", one of which is the sin of irrelevance. Surveying the US market for aerosol products in 2007, they found a large number of companies offering aerosols and deodorants that were "CFC-free". Commendable as this may be, the commercial use of CFCs was banned after the Montreal Protocol in 1987 – so it is hardly surprising to find them absent from aerosols some 20 years later.
Trickery on behalf of the advertising industry is hardly big news. But recent research by psychologists at Princeton University shows that people naturally infer much more information than is contained in the literal content of a message. So, for example, a Christmas cake that has "60% rich fruit" written on the side, is interpreted by consumers as meaning that the product contains more rich fruit than the average Christmas cake. If it didn't, the trusting consumer reasons, why would the label mention it in the first place?
Well, why indeed. The lesson for the government is that eco-labelling needs to be tightly controlled and strictly regulated, in the same way that information about nutritional content has been standardised and rolled out across every food and drink product in the country. If it is not, and the public start to feel as if they are being greenwashed at the checkout, then the risk of a trust rebellion looms large. But with companies scrabbling to position their products as the greenest on the market, what hope for the ethical consumer looking to make an informed choice this Christmas?
The problem is that combating climate change by changing the way we consume doesn't just mean consuming differently – it also means consuming less, or sometimes not at all. As any advertising executive worth their marketing diploma will tell you, they don't sell products – they sell ideas. But even these masters of manipulation struggle with the teasingly oxymoronic topic of sustainable consumption. Because for the ad agencies, selling the idea of "not buying" would be (as Gerald Kaufman memorably described Labour's 1983 manifesto) the longest suicide note in history. Christmas may have been rebranded, but for the guardians of consumption, selling nothing just isn't an option.