Joel Makower at Two Steps Forward reports on a survey of green marketing that TerraChoice Environmental Marketing made at six big-box stores. Their research teams found 1,753 green claims made for 1,018 products. Most of them (57 percent) were misleadingly narrow, and 26 percent offered no proof either on the product or on its website. Fewer than 1 percent were actually false.

Neither Makower nor I would call this "greenwashing," as TerraChoice does. Would other claims made for products stand up even this well? I'll make a wild guess that, for the moment, green marketing is actually a bit more honest than marketing in general -- a low standard to be sure, but if the environmental movement could raise the standards of 21st-century capitalism in this area, it should count for something.