Noted: Brown Is the New Green

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2012/noted-brown-is-the-new-green/?ref=fp_blog_title

My freshman college days were spent frequenting a sandwich shop near campus, where fresh, local ingredients could be had between two slices of wheat bread, all for just $4. When one of my friends started working there, the deal became even sweeter. However, this friend soon became an informant; the day she revealed that the shop’s wheat bread was exactly the same as their white bread, save for a few drops of food coloring, I was crushed. This was my first inkling that color, even in food consumption, is a powerful selling point for consumers. My deli-centric experience proved that our associations with colors often lead to blind assumptions — just because the bread was brown instead of white, I assumed I was making a healthy choice. It doesn’t stop with my faux wheat bread; an article on GOOD reveals how brown is the choice color when companies seek to convey a wholesome, eco-friendly message.

If you want proof of this trend, just take a look at fast food restaurants, where disposable napkins, once blindingly white, are now oatmeal colored. The Wall Street Journal highlights Seventh Generation, a company who adds brown pigment in the process of making disposable diapers. “[It's important] not so much that it’s brown, it’s that it’s not white,” says Louis Chapdelaine, who directs the fibers department of the company.

For a while, “greenwashing” was the buzz word du jour, wherein companies would repackage a product to appeal to eco-conscious consumers. Everything from tote bags to cleaning products are now smacked with green-colored labels, insinuating an environmentally friendly product. When we so heavily depend on visual cues to make shopping decisions, this is extremely misleading — how do we know when green, or brown, truly indicates an Earth-friendly product?