I just learned a new term - greenwashing. It is hardly a favorable term and is compared to whitewashing as in concealing a flaw or failure.

As defined by the Website www.sourcewatch.org:

“Greenwashing is the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtues of a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy.”

The idea here is that you come up with an idea to make money, but the idea has lots of problems attached to it, but you push forward claiming to be green and environmentally conscious.

At this point, I will not offer any specific examples since I don’t really want a lot of lawyers calling me.

I simply offer it as yet another word we can throw around our industry as HVACR contractors get caught up in all this talk about green technology and the government regulations tied in with all the green talk.

There are those, I know, who like to place all the regulatory blame on “tree huggers” and “environmental whackos,” and similar named folks.

But those terms are getting a bit passé, so out of date, so not with it, so cliché. So here’s a new one, so hip, so with it, so now: Greenwasher.