Why the magazine’s green award is bogus.

This March, Good Housekeeping announced it would be getting in on the ongoing greenwashing of the American marketplace. The magazine is launching a “Green Seal” to coincide with the 100^th anniversary of its eponymous endorsement, which guarantees the quality of everything from yogurt to storm windows. Greenwashing is usually the art of scoring an environmental touchdown simply by moving the goalposts. But I’m referring to that term of art in, sorry, a meta way. With all the greenwashing plus legitimate attempts at green labeling, the word green is useless as a label of distinction. Corporations toss it around to claim they’re being good environmental stewards, consumers are numb to it, and the greenest companies tend not to tout it at all. And, as if the meaning of green weren’t hazy enough, this latest label comes from a magazine that has had a long, cozy, and conflicted relationship with its seal-holders and no plans to modify procedure for the new green label.

Good Housekeeping touts its original seal as a mark that consumers can look to for quality assurance. It offers shoppers a two-year warranty in case a product bearing the seal also bears a defect. It was actually a “Seal of Approval” until a court case forced Hearst, the magazine’s parent, to drop the "approval." But the cultural word association remains. Good Housekeeping, with a 2008 circulation of 4.6 million, runs a research institute where products are tested before they earn the seal. Though its influence is on the wane, there’s still a century of awareness behind the seal, which is why Hearst is on a campaign to tailor it for the next generation of young, affluent, and environmentally conscious consumers.

However, as the Times reported in 2006, the Good Housekeeping Seal has long been a pay-to-play proposition. To earn the seal, products must advertise in the magazine, and to advertise in the magazine, products must qualify for the seal*. When I reconfirmed the tit-for-tat, a Good Housekeeping spokesperson told me, in seemingly as arcane a way as possible, “There is no other magazine that offers this kind of assurance—we support our seal holders with this warranty for their consumers, and we ask that they support us in return.” The Times said Good Housekeeping advertisers typically must match the ad buys they make in competing magazines.

In the struggling magazine industry, this aggressive deal is at least partially insulating Good Housekeeping from the current downturn. (For the first half of 2009, ad pages are down 19 percent in Good Housekeeping from 2008; that’s around the middle of the pack for titles in its genre.) Later this year, when the first batch of Green Seal products is announced, they will be subject to the same advertising requirements as regular seal holders are.

Many magazines, it must be said, suggest that products reviewed in their pages would do well to advertise in them, but nowhere else attaches its own brand so closely to its advertisers’. Indeed, Consumer Reports, the nearest analogue, holds up its independence from manufacturers as its standard, specifically disallowing reviewed products to advertise its recommendations. Meanwhile, Good Houskeeping's advertisers make regular appearances in the magazine's editorial content: In one issue I reviewed, an article offered suggestions on how to lose weight by switching to lower calorie foods, complete with colorful thumbnail images of the products. Many of the same foods were advertised either in that issue or in proximate ones. Yet the article, laden with national name brands, curiously declined to identify a healthy honey mustard. Instead, a generic icon stuck out like a plain white T-shirt. Of course, I couldn’t find a honey mustard advertised among the soups, cold cuts, and cookies that happened to be recommended in the editorial. (UPDATE: After this article was published, a Good Housekeeping spokesperson said they recommend "products that we have evaluated and determined to be the best for the story. Whether or not they are advertisers or Seal holders does not impact that decision whatsoever.")

The regular Good Housekeeping Seal’s pay-for-play component is already troubling, but in terms of products, the magazine doesn’t claim (though it doesn’t exactly disclaim) to be performing a comprehensive survey a la Consumer Reports; it merely warranties those products that are advertised in its pages. But the Green Seal, by definition, is a different monster. While the regular seal only has to be a warranty against shoddiness, the Green Seal is an affirmation of environmental friendliness, at best a subjective standard, and at worst a shifting one.