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Greenwash - Companies falsely claiming green cred.

The typical image of the Mediterranean is a blue sea with white-walled houses clinging to the rocky landscape. Every spring, after the Easter processions when the Mistral stops blowing, house-proud citizens freshen up those walls with a bucket of whitewash.

The power of a simple mixture of lime, chalk and water to hide the ravages of a year's wear and tear is so compelling it has entered the language. When a politician puts the best face on a difficult policy, we accuse them of 'whitewashing' the truth.

The language lives and whitewash has now acquired a green tinge as companies appeal to environmentally careful consumers. Some of them claim green credentials where no green credentials exist. Culprits range from “green phones” through “eco-credit cards” to “clean, green nuclear power”. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission has had to step in and regulate the offset of carbon dioxide emissions and provide guidelines and definitions for the term “climate neutral”.

Your challenge is to develop the necessary X-ray vision to see past the greenwash to the facts underneath. A mixture of specific examples and general principles are provided here to hone your green wash detectors.

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# Article Title Author Hits
1 Coral reefs crucial to origin of new marine species, finds study Neville Gillmore 55
2 Wall Street plays carbon trading Giovanni Ebono 444
3 Whack on the Greenwash Giovanni Ebono 563
4 Blogger calls for end to Greenwash Giovanni Ebono 617
 

Repco Rally    BIT LATE FOR 7.30 report/ but protest as shown below anyway

The anti-Repco Rally protesters of the north coast are looking for your support. This weekend the Repco Car Rally is going to pass through national parks and the internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot of the Green Cauldron in North Eastern NSW.  Noisy, polluting, environmentally damaging cars are going to tear along the roads of some of the most beautiful parts of this state, containing endangered and vulnerable species,  during breeding time for many animals. As well as the cars there will be spectators and their vehicles, helicopters, media and extra police in the area.

`One of the great things about America, one of the beauties of our country, is that when we see a young, innocent child blown up by an IED, we cry.'

GWBush - Washington, D.C., Mar. 29, 2006