Our focus on natural ingredients was, in retrospect rather laughable as we included all sorts of what we now call, toxic ingredients, but promoted the “natural” additives. We looked for opportunities to tie into events and with charities that focused on green initiatives with an eye toward increasing sales.

In many ways that hasn’t changed.

Brands across categories, but particularly in the natural products industry are choosing charities with which to align themselves. In most cases this is an exercise in determining what the brand will stand for. The bigger the brand, the larger the charity and the more thought is given to this exercise as seen in the almost perfect launch last year of Clorox Greenworks brand.

But many brands have turned this reasoning on it’s head now and are looking at their social responsibility as the primary raisn d’etre for being. Is this a viable strategy?

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Recent headlines may give eco entrepreneurs a reason to worry!… In fact some of the bigger independent players in the natural and organic arena are doing just that according to a recent NY Times article.

“The whole landscape is shifting, and I think everyone is struggling to redefine their strategy in the midst of huge change that ain’t finished,” said Jeffrey Hollender, the president of Seventh Generation…

My concern, when I saw that Clorox entered the market, was that they would pose a threat and a big one, to smaller manufacturers.

The core of the issue is usually the distribution deals that large, established companies are able to make with large well known retailers. For example, it’s much easier for Clorox to sell one more line of products into Wal-Mart than it is for a small eco-cleaner company. Conversely, as Wal-Mart begins to look for green brands smaller companies which once only sold their products to natural stores suddenly have the opportunity to enter the big chains.

It turns out, I was right. As often happens, it didn’t take long for Clorox to flex its marketing muscle and dominate the category.

Clorox’s green gamble appears to be paying off: A year after the company launched its Green Works line of natural cleaning products, the brand has established itself as a leader in the category, capturing 42% market share.

Clorox’s move was only smart business. As they saw smaller natural manufacturers steal market share points, albeit only a few, from their core line product, they sought a way to reverse the flow. Grenworks was the answer, a timely one as the trend toward green was and is moving to a tipping point.

As I write this a year later, I wonder about ecopreneurs impacted by the Clorox decision to enter the green space. Larger, well know natural branded products, like Seventh Generation, may have the ability to compete. Retailers rarely like to have only one brand name in a category – it’s so much more fun to have them compete for shelf space (that is cough up the dough for placement and promotions).

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Perhaps a more consumer friendly definition is the one provided by the Stop Greenwash site, “Used to describe the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.”

The site goes on to explain,

“The average citizen is finding it more and more difficult to tell the difference between those companies genuinely dedicated to making a difference and those that are using a green curtain to conceal dark motives.”

Examples of greenwashing highlighted on the Greenpeace site are: GM’s Save Gas Ad Campaign and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

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Are you freaking kidding me?

Bleach is a huge cause of calls to the poison control center, and the makers of Clorox Chlorine Bleach want us to soak young children’s food containers in it?

These are just some of the oh so useful suggestions found on Clorox.com under AMAZING USES. Heh… the only amazing thing about bleach is its ability to strip fabric of all colors and eat through fabric when used repeatedly or in higher concentrations (and that SMELL!)

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For those lucky enough not to suffer from green claustrophobia, attendees could choose from a potpourri of Green rock stars – such as Van Jones who spoke about the new green collar economy, the incredibly interesting and sometimes bizarre Paul Stamets who seems like the Fox Mulder of the mushroom world and the dynamic food sovereignty trio of Raj Patel, Eric Holt-Giménez and Miguel Altieri who, among other things, discussed how the food shortage is an ecological issue not just a political topic.

Taking a break from the speakers, we had to cruise the exhibitor marketplace. With so much to choose from we took a look at the numerous additions to the myriad vender booths. Myriad, as in about 50 percent of these companies use this festival for marketing or promote a “green lifestyle”. Okay, we’re not going to call it outright greenwashing but some of these businesses really milk this whole green thing. Of course we’re happy to see new honest additions (or at least venders that we have not seen before here) such as Mozilla and we can and should throw our support behind the community powered, open source FireFox Browser.

With more additions come some subtractions. Most notably, what happened to Burt’s Bees? We heard that the lip balm buzzers got 86ed from the festival because they happened to be owned by uh — who was that again? – oh yes, Clorox. No problem there but then the green playing field needs to be level right? So, that means no Ben and Jerry’s (even if they switched to all organic ingredients). So, what’s the deal with Honest Tea? The Coke owned or partially owned company had booth in the middle of food sample frenzy. What gives?