Natural color vs. color
Natural fragrance vs. fragrance
Shea Butter vs. Vitellaria paradoxa
Paraben free vs. containing parabens
Greenwashing is everywhere from food, social media, health, and is very strong in skin care and hair care and these are some of the best examples. Although most people would reach for an ingredient list much more like the one on the left and be willing to pay a higher price, the truth is that not only are the majority of the ingredients the same but the one on the left is actually more harmful. ´Natural´ color, fragrance, and flavor are used by companies loosely based on the logic that at the end of the day no matter what process it goes through everything is natural since it comes from earth. The majority of ingredient differences based on greenwashing don’t cause the product to be worse other than a high price tag, however there still are many cases where the ´better ingredient´ is actually worse and still costs more.
An example of this is Parabens which can disrupt hormones in the body and harm fertility and reproductive organs, affect birth outcomes, and increase the risk of cancer.
Another preservative is called Phenoxyethanol and is seen as a natural preservative. Meanwhile this logic is supported by many brands supporting greenwashing and less trustable websites such as WEBMD, it is actually going against many studies and has even been disproved by the FDA.
One of the biggest dangers of greenwashing the fact that it goes against vaccines, some parents who believe in greenwashing don’t give their children vaccines based on extremely biased and illogical logic, for example I checked myself to see if there were any sources agreeing with the most common anti-vacation claim “Vaccines cause autism” . What I found was 1 source from 22 years ago agreeing meanwhile there were 44 sources going against them. This shows how illogical greenwashing is.
In an interview with Evelina Gijon I had asked her on her views on greenwashing,
“I know there’s not much proof that they work but there is no proof that vaccines could cause someone harm, Other than for religious reasons and stuff like that there’s no reason to not give people vaccines and that whole autism thing is just stupid and unproven.”
In another interview with 3 people including Lizzy, Kalyley Pistachio, and Evelina I had asked them if they knew about the greenwashing in parabens, all three had believed that Parabens had been harmful only based on their shampoo bottles.
The dangers of greenwashing are so major I don’t even have to write anything in the conclusions because it speaks for itself.