By John DeFore

For a movie that explicitly addresses the perils of overconsumption, Pixar’s WALL*E is being used to promote an awful lot of consumer products.

One tie-in in particular is rankling Greenpeace. It seems that the lovable robot’s image has popped up on boxes of Kleenex, a product the activist group has criticized with a “Kleercut” campaign that asserts, “it takes 90 years to grow a box of Kleenex” because the product’s manufacturer Kimberly-Clark “all but refuses to use recycled paper in its products.” (Among other things, they’re trying to get parents and teachers to reject the company’s tissues in classrooms.)

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strong> By John DeFore

The Federal Trade Commission met in Washington on Tuesday with the aim of speeding up its efforts to regulate green marketing claims. Motivated largely by the rapid expansion of firms selling carbon-offsets, renewable energy certificates (such as those assuring buyers that they’re investing in new eco-friendly power plants), and the like, the FTC’s main goal is to make sure consumers know exactly what they’re buying.

The FTC and invited experts are looking at items such as airline offers that charge an optional fee to offset the ecological impact of a flight and a credit cards advertising “points” of renewable energy as a reward for each dollar spent.

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