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Quick, here's a short pop quiz. True or false:
1. Products labeled "natural," "green" or "environmentally friendly" cannot contain more than a small amount of synthetic chemical compounds.2. Bottled water is healthier and more environmentally friendly than tap water.3. Vehicles should be traded in for hybrid models.4. Organic fruits and vegetables, which are grown without the use of pesticides, are more nutritious than others.It's likely that you thought some, if not all, of the above statements are true.In reality, it's not that simple."There's a huge amount of misunderstanding out there," said Michael Vandenbergh, a former Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff who is now a law professor at Vanderbilt University.The confusion has come at a time when public awareness of environmental awareness has prompted millions of Americans to ask: What can I do to help? This deep-felt desire has sparked a multibillion-dollar demand for products claiming to be natural and environmentally friendly. "People want to be green," said Paul Stern, a social psychologist at the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. "There hasn't been a time like this for quite a while."'A bandwagon effect'Businesses, for example, have used the EPA's much-lauded Energy Star program, which ranks the top energy-efficient appliances, as a basis to design product lines. But the EPA's inspector general issued a highly critical report last month concluding that the agency has done few independent tests to verify whether products with the seal are the cleanest, instead relying on the manufacturers themselves.These practices "weaken the integrity of the Energy Star label," according to the inspector general said. No agency regulates which products can claim to be "natural" or "green," and there are no official guidelines as to what those terms mean. "I've been monitoring with a smile, sometimes with a laugh, just the number of different products and companies who are saying that they're 'green,' " said Daniel Howard, chairman of the marketing department at Southern Methodist University and an expert on advertising and consumer behavior.The result is that a lot of people are paying a lot of money for products that aren't what they claim, he said."Knowing what I know about consumers, markets and businesses, I see that it's basically a bandwagon effect that probably has only a moderate correspondence to the reality of actually being environmentally friendly," he said.So what should you do?Educate yourself about the issues, and learn what steps you can take to make an impact."The most important thing you can teach the population is how to do independent research and to separate out what's credible from what's not credible," said Stephen Schneider, a professor of environmental studies at Stanford University, who teaches a class on “environmental literacy.” One thing you shouldn’t do is feel overwhelmed and give up.
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