Greenwashing

The Chicago Tribune has an interesting story on consumers growing "skeptical" about purported eco-friendly products.

"Sometimes, I wonder if any of it's really green or if it's all a marketing scheme," Meadows said.

Someone has made up a term, "greenwashing", which is supposed to mean something like "whitewashing". The idea is that a product is advertised as "more green than it really is".

Well, if ecology were a solid science full of provable conclusions, maybe there'd be ways of measuring such a thing.

And, half the time, things pushed very heavily by environmentalists, like the ugly new light bulbs, turn out to be toxic in their own right.

What does "green"
even mean?

To my inquiring mind,
it's vague and undefined.

How can you check the veracity
of claims with such opacity?