Michelle Gabriel attended, "Clean, Green, & Candid: Environmental Issues Every General Counsel (GC) Should Know" at Morrison and Foerster. Excellent info. Greenwashing was discussed in detail. What I learned:
1. The FTC is putting out new guidelines on Greenwashing.
2. If companies see it in their competitors they complain to the NAD. At the talk they described this as the National Advertising Division. I have looked this up and it is a devision of the Better Business Bureau. http://www.nadreview.org/. It's a very interesting page - you can see their press releases of their latest reviews of advertising claims that are being challenged.
3. Corporate counsel sees this as a large risk area for the company and in some companies are with the product development team and working with marketing early on to avoid issues. Most often they are gate keepers - saying no to products just about to go out. But now they are becoming more proactive and fixing it early on rather than spend a lot of money later.
4. Class action suits have been few but there will be more. I wish I learned more about this - as I am not a lawyer this was the really good stuff. But it was a short panel discussion. The only case mentioned was one where a company created it's own certification and a label for it's products, which was misleading.
5. I asked about companies using a logo to show a certification that they did not earn. The lawyer I spoke to had not heard of any cases of that.
So in general, the government can't regulate and enforce, so industry is doing it themselves. As with the Walmart initiative. If successful, that will do more for sustainablity than the government will ever do.
Doing some after the talk research:
Here is an interesting article about how ineffective the FTC has been and also how many types of greenwashing are not covered by the FTC guidelines.
http://green.wikia.com/wiki/FTC_Regulation_of_Greenwashing
I see references about the Green Guides being updated in 2009 but I can't find any new guides.
Also in 2009 it looks like the FTC did go after a serious case, charging some big companies:
http://www.globalclimatelaw.com/2009/06/articles/environmental/
ftc-files-greenwashing-charges-against-three-companies-based-on-
ecofriendly-advertising-claims/
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