What Is Greenwashing?

“Greenwashing” is the dubious practice of marketing a product or service based on misleading environmental prowess. This prowess being falsely portrayed by deceptive claims aimed at promoting the public perception that a company's products are environmentally friendly - when in reality they are not. The greenwashing index is a great tool for discovering the difference between vetted environmental characteristics and clever marketing.

(The above website has since been taken offline.)

It’s crucial to always be skeptical of companies that overstate the small benefits of environmental characteristics, while not considering the impact of a products' full cycle. For example: businesses' claiming a product is “dark green” while it is only manufactured with 10% recycled content. In this case, 90% of the product is not green at all and could be manufactured or sourced irresponsibly. Our experience is that products containing small amounts of recycled content (less than 50%) certainly shouldn`t be labeled as “dark green” products.

There are dozens of reputable eco labels, certifications, claims, and standards that The Raw Office incorporates into creating the Raw Score data for each product. We curated and selected over five thousand dark green eco forward products and rejected 93% of all products that we reviewed, as they did not live up to our high environmental standards.

By now you’ve probably realized that we really care about environmental sustainability – and we have no patience for those who attempt to falsely profit off of it without proper "eco integrity".

You won’t find the color green in our website design elements. Using green has become a cliché go-to in the industry, which somehow magically implies that a product is eco friendly because of a graphic design choice. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, we associate with blue to separate ourselves from the pack of “green” claims and companies out there. Blue symbolizes trust, loyalty, confidence, and wisdom. It is the colour of our unpolluted skies and oceans, which give us life. Blue is also considered beneficial to the mind and body – which is why we chose this wonderful colour as our theme.