Image via Burt's Bees

Burt's Bees' new $10 million-plus ad campaign highlights ingredients consumers should be wary of when purchasing beauty products. While I completely advocate using advertising as an opportunity to educate the public, I also have to cry "foul." Why? Because parent company Clorox, who recently purchased the company for the unprecedented amount of almost one billion dollars (as reported here), is arguably one of the biggest corporate polluters out there. They just came out with their controversial Green Works line of supposedly environmentally friendly cleaners, but this hardly makes up for the fact that their corporation--which also produces Pine-Sol, Formula 409, Liquid Plumr, and Glad line of bags, wraps and containers, among others--is responsible for some pretty hefty pollutants. In fact, their alliance with The Sierra Club has stirred up cries of outrage from devout environmentalists, some of whom claim the revered club sold out due to payments from Clorox to allow their symbol to be used on Green Works products. Could "greenwashing" be at play?

According to a Consumer Reports blog:

TerraChoice, a marketing firm that recently released "The Six Sins of Greenwashing," defines the term as "the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service."

If these decisions made by Clorox represent the company's step toward greener pastures, then great. However, I find it hard to believe that they're willing to phase out chemical-riddled household staples like Pine-Sol and Formula 409, products that surely contribute millions to their yearly revenue. But the broader idea of greenwashing solidifies what we've been suspicious of all along: that corporations will jump on any hot marketing term in order to convince consumers that they're buying responsibly, even when the opposite is true. So are environmentally concerned Product Fienders at a loss when they buy Burt's Bees products? Hard to say. On the one hand, high sales numbers communicate that the public is indeed interested in supporting natural products. But on the other, buying these products bolsters a huge corporation responsible for reprehensible environmental crimes.

Where do you stand?