Twitter, the technological equivalent of a noisy dawn chorus that wakes you at 4:00 am, is really quite cute if you remember to set your quiet / sleep time settings.

Hardly breaking news, but courtesy of twitter we picked an interesting item on greenwash following the publication of the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) annual report. It shows that in 2007 it received over 500 complaints about environmental claims, compared with just over 100 the year before. The subjects of the ASA's censure included some of the usual suspects from Shell and Ryanair to Toyota for practicing "greenwash" – ie misleading consumers on their environmental practices, or benefits of their products and services. More on the Groaniad's website on consumer's increasing confusion over the range of terminology that is banded about (e.g. "100% recycled"?) and the contrary virtue of eco-promising (Ethical spin?).

But what really caught our attention was the cutely and synthetically communicated 10 signs of Greenwash, a guide by Futerra: "things to look out for on advertising and packaging that can indicate when a company is trying to use greenwash".

1. Fluffy language

Words or terms with no clear meaning, e.g. "ecofriendly".

2. Green products v dirty company

Such as efficient light bulbs made in a factory which pollutes rivers.

3. Suggestive pictures

Green images that indicate an (unjustified) green impact eg flowers blooming from exhaust pipes.

4. Irrelevant claims

Emphasising one tiny green attribute when everything else is "ungreen".

5. Best in a bad class?

Declaring you are slightly greener than the rest, even if the rest are pretty terrible.

6. When it's just not credible

"Ecofriendly" cigarettes anyone? "Greening" a dangerous product doesn't make it safe.

7. Gobbledygook

Jargon and information that only a scientist could check or understand.

8. Imaginary friends

A "label" that looks like third party endorsement ... except it is made up by the company itself.

9. No proof

It could be right, but where's the evidence?

10. Outright lying

Totally fabricated claims or data.

So why reproduce it again here? Well, it occurred to us that from time to time we could be guilty of the occasional error of commission (plenty of omissions we know that!), ie accepting uncritically a claim from one of our retailers' or reproducing a description provided to us (hey we can't check hundreds of thousands manually, that's what users are for).

So, what can you do? At the moment we have various controls in place to allow our users to report problems with listings (mostly used because a link is broken, which is fair enough and we thank you for that!). Registered users can also vote and comment on brands and retailers. We are also working on clever ways of letting users votes on products actually have influence the their ranking, which is what those green and red thumbs are for. Click on them to see what happens.

Mean time, the Futerra list is a useful aide memoire for ourselves (though careful observers will note our scheme can classify products independently of the rating retailer and brand - cf # 2 above.) and for our users. So cute that we are going to ask them if we can reproduce it.