The supermarket game : Are you fooled by the green-washing?

• Acknowledging how do we choose what we consume
• Highlighting the main methods that brands use to convince us that their products are green / sustainable
• Raising awareness on green-washing
• Getting knowledge on quality labels.

Duration : 30 minutes / group

In order to carry out this activity, you will have to browse the shelves of a supermarket in the days leading up to it. You will have to select different brands of a range of 6 to 10 consumer products of your choice from the shelves.

Each set of products should make participants aware of the marketing methods commonly used by brands to make you believe that their products are environmentally friendly, clean or sustainable. We advice you to prior the most common items people are eating so that the participants can feel concerned and share their own experience.

Here are a few examples of what you could select:

• Coffee : 2 fair-trade coffees from 2 different fair-trade labels, 1 organic coffee, 1 locally-roasted coffee whose packaging emphasizes the artisanal nature of the product, 1 coffee from a well-known brand whose marketing highlight their interest for the environment (they might have their own quality label)…
• Biscuits : 1 packet of organic biscuits with the French organic label “Nature & Progrès” from an organic shop in a cardboard packaging, 1 packet of organic biscuits with the EU organic label from a discount supermarket in a cardboard packaging, 1 packet of biscuits without packaging from a local bulk shop (without any specific label)…
• Olive oil : 1L of extra-virgin Spanish olive oil from Spain olives cultivated in “a sustainable farm” from a regular supermarket in a glass bottle, 1L of Italian olive oil whose packaging refers to tradition and highlight the know-how of the brand (but if you look more deeply, you can see that the olives are coming “from EU and outside EU” and that it is not organic), 1L of Tunisian organic olive oil with the EU organic label (but not extra virgin)…
• Canned corn : 1 can from a famous brand with packaging detailing the brand's environmental commitments, 1 can of organic corn with a very clean design, 1 glass-can with a very green design from a local company, 1 can from the supermarket's brand with the labels “GMO-free”, “no pesticide residues” and “no preservatives”…

Just before the activity starts, set you shelves. Put your products in an attractive way as if you were in a real supermarket. Play with the codes as far as you'd like to create the proper atmosphere: display green advertisements on the wall, play a peaceful music referring to Nature, burn a piece of Armenian paper just before welcoming the participants into the room…

Invite participants to enter your “green” supermarket by small group (3 to 5 persons maximum at a time). Ask them to select one item out of the other for each type of product. They can create pairs or small teams for this task. Then, invite them to explain you their choice : Why did they choose this specific product and not the others? What attracted them ? What did they pay attention to?

Encourage them to discuss their choices : Do the selection criteria of their counterparts make sense for them too? What would have been their own choices and criteria? What do they agree on? What are they doubtful about? What do they know about the different labels? Which marketing tricks do they recognize in this game?

As a conclusion, invite the participants to resume what they learnt from the exercise and how they intend to apply this knowledge back home.

• A range of everyday consumer products with different brands per product, that show how “green-washing” works.