Green Talk thinks Clorox ’s role in trying to reduce water bottle usage is an oxymoron. I think it is green wash.

I meant to write about this a couple of weeks ago, but new (good) habits are hard to start, which is why I am willing to cut some companies some slack. But Clorox is not one of those companies in this case.

Here is the deal as I understand it. Clorox, along with Nalgene, is sponsoring Filter for Good the purpose of which is to get people to, you guessed it, use filtered water instead of bottled water. Clorox is the North America parent of Brita. So far so good. Americans have an unhealthy love affair with bottled water, much of which is just plain old municipal water in a wasteful package. So what is wrong with this picture?

It seems that in Europe Brita filters are recycled, but they aren’t here in the United States! That to me is greenwash. If the same product is recyclalbe and already is recycled in another country the company should be working at top speed to get it recycled in every other. Green Talk has a link to a video and lots more information on what you can do to convince Clorox to start recycling Brita water filters here in the United States.

This recycling conundrum points up a problem that we in the US face. In Europe there seems to be a better system for retailers to get products back to the manufacturer. If we really want to close the loop on products we need to improve the system for getting products back to their point of origin. But until there is an easy way for retailers to reverse the supply chain (storage of the return for recycling product is the big problem) it is going to be an up hill battle. Hmmm, maybe there is a business opportunity there — a store in every major mall that accepts recyclables.