(Justmeans.com / CSR News) - February 5, 2010 - For the first time in over a decade the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is revising its guidelines for environmental marketing and hitting companies hard with enforcement. The biggest issue to date being the mislabeling of rayon clothing as sustainable bamboo, leaving Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target, and 75 other companies with a stern warning to re-label or be sued for green fraud. 

The New York Times reported this week that the explosion of green marketing over the past few years, paired with new terms such as “carbon-neutral” and “sustainability” that did not exist in 1998’s “Green Guides”, had left complaints of misleading environmental claims unchecked during the Bush Administration.  

In the absence of enforcement, companies like K-Mart and Sears have used green marketing to sell clothing made from bamboo, misleading consumers to believe the products are environmentally friendly. While bamboo in its basic form is sustainable when used as flooring or decoration, processing it with polluting chemicals to make it into rayon, which can be made from any kind of plant cellulose, is not. This is considered ‘greenwashing’ to the FTC, and will result in a lawsuit if the practice is not arrested. 

Although the FTC remains reserved about the details of their revisions, seven complaints of green fraud have been filed since Obama took office, and communication is clear that they are no longer afraid to get involved in developing markets, especially when consumers have the right to verify that the product they are purchasing is sustainable. 

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, would like the warnings to serve as a wake-up call to companies using the sustainable brand for profit: “Rayon is rayon, even if bamboo has been used somewhere along the line in the manufacturing process.”  Several companies have already changed their practices and re-labeled.