I’m excited to (finally!) unveil the new banner for the blog. The banner is hot off the presses from my friend, and yoga teacher, Laura Slate Shope. One of the driving forces behind No Faux Green is to provide me with an outlet to write about the green building industry. One week I may cover building science and the next large-scale renewable energy projects. The blog’s title is a response to the rampant use of greenwashing by marketers of everything from homes to bath soaps. Hopefully the irony of the green elixir will not be lost of readers.

Green-wash (green’wash’, -wôsh’) – verb: the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service. From: http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/

The green miracle elixir is a reference to the snake oil salesman archetype. Snake oil is a topical preparation made from the Chinese water snake (Enhydris chinensis). The fats and oils from the snake are high in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) along with other fatty acids. EPA is an omega-3 fatty acid, which are commonly associated with fish and frequently taken as a dietary supplement. Traditionally the snake oil was used to treat inflammation and pain from such ailments as rheumatoid arthritis and bursitis. Although there was probably some validity to the effectiveness of traditional preparations, unscrupulous salesmen in Europe and the US sold formulations with little to proven benefit and contained probably just as much snake oil!

Today the use of the term has little to do with the actual snake oil medicine and is instead applied “metaphorically to any product with exaggerated marketing but questionable and/or unverifiable quality or benefit” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil).

I think the first time I came across the snake oil salesman character was in Oklahama (Ali Hakim selling a “magic potion”) or an old episode of The Simpsons. Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson also had great fun playing around with the concept in their Say Say Say video. Today greenwashing is synonymous with yesterday’s snake oil salesman.

Do you have a favorite example of greenwashing or snake oil salesman? If so, please leave a comment!