The FTC last week came out with new guidelines for marking a product as “Green” or “Environmentally Friendly” and I say, it’s about time!

We all have seen the proliferation of “Green Marketing” added to products that have little change compared to the same product before the new marketing.  In a way it has greatly reduced the mind share of “Green” in the consumer market space. 

The new guidelines essentially require specificity when making claims about how environmentally friendly your product is and then backing it up with metrics.  No more generalized “green washing” of product packaging to sell more products to environmentally conscience consumers. 

Also, businesses now have to differentiate clearly what part of the goods being sold is green: for example does the claim “refer(s) to the product, the product’s packaging, a service or to a portion or component of the product, package or service”.

I highly doubt this will stem the tide of new so-called green products hitting the shelves but rather the specific claims will make deciding on the “greeness” of a product more difficult as marketers use ever more confusing wordplay to get the results they want. 

In other green news Sun Chips recently reversed new green packaging because it is to loud when handling or opening it.  I guess many consumers only care about green when it is convenient for them and/or not too costly as evidenced by waining interest in alternative energy as oil prices level out. 

Read more about the new requirements on the FTC’s Website.

An oldie but goodies from the Ted conference.  What leads to success acording to Tedsters:

I happened upon a couple of videos after reading “The Long Tail” and researching some of the concepts in the book…these are two of the most interesting I thought I would share: