what is greenwashing 
greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company s products are environmentally sound greenwashing involves making an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company s products are environmentally friendly or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do in addition greenwashing may occur when a company attempts to emphasize sustainable aspects of a product to overshadow the company s involvement in environmentally damaging practices performed through the use of environmental imagery misleading labels and hiding tradeoffs greenwashing is a play on the term whitewashing which means using false information to intentionally hide wrongdoing error or an unpleasant situation in an attempt to make it seem less bad than it is 