You’ve seen products with “eco-friendly” written on them or even something as vague as “Mother Nature Approved”. Turns out that these products may not be so eco-friendly after all. It’s a devious marketing strategy known as Greenwashing, often used by companies to up sell their products by calling them green and eco-friendly.

In such a scenario, it’s increasingly difficult for consumers to make informed choices and they usually end up being hoodwinked into buying fake “green” products. Eco-Labels is an app that can help you check whether a particular label is actually genuine or a fake. Its online version is available at Greenerchoices.org, and now Consumer Reports has brought this app to your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

The next time you go grocery shopping, you can cross check the labels on personal care products, food and cleaners. The app scrutinizes products for vague and misleading use of words. Labels containing jargon such as “hypoallergenic” or an indeterminate word such as “natural” are clubbed under the “not meaningful” category. Even a commonly accepted term such as “organic” is closely inspected to check if it matches the product in hand as it is classified under the “meaningful on most products but not all” category. Such stringent filtering make this app an acid test that household products must go through before they can be truly called “green products”.

“We’ve launched the mobile Eco-Label App to help consumers find out whether the claims on their favorite products are truthful,” says Urvashi Rangan, Director of Consumer Safety and Sustainability at Consumer Reports.

Rating: 4/5 | Download Eco-Labels

Image by EcoNetworks