Uh-Oh! The Fox is Guarding the Henhouse
When is certification NOT a good idea? When the body doing the certifying owns the company being certified but doesn’t disclose this. Can you say “conflict of interest?”
“Tested Green” Environmental Certifications were neither tested, nor green. The Washington, D.C. based company was apparently running a pay-for-certifications program and improperly stating that independent associations endorsed the certifications (the “independent associations” and Tested Green were all owned by the same person).
Ironically, the page where I first found this was trying to sell people on a high-priced and kind of dicey-looking conference about certification fraud. I had to dig around on Google until I found a link I felt comfortable sharing.
A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com
Thanks for this post. It is the kind of thing we need. As a group, the green and ethical of us need to police ourselves. If we do it then people like this will not survive.
Yes, and we need to be transparent about *when * we’re policing ourselves, which is what I didn’t see in the example I wrote about.