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Not sure if some company that's touting the latest "green" goodie is really being nice rather than naughty? Well, Eileen Gunn over at TheStreet.com wrote a terrific article helping consumers spot "eco-fraud" when shopping:

Our job as consumers, environmental groups say, is to encourage this responsible behavior with our buying decisions. So here are a few common-sense tips to guide you on an eco-friendly trip through the aisles of your local retailers. 1) Be Skeptical 2) Read the labels and 3) Don't play an all-or-nothing game.

She details each category with great advice, like this (under "Don't play an all-or-nothing game"):

Unless you confine your shopping to consumer-goods companies like Clif Bar, Seventh Generation and Annie's, which started out with the intent of being environmentally responsible, you'll be hard-pressed to find a consumer company that doesn't have as much to criticize as to laud when it comes to environmental behavior.

But if you buy more green products at your local supermarket, the store is likely to stock more. Choose a corporation's environmentally responsible products over its conventional ones and it will roll out more of the former, as will its competitors. You can see this shift happening already.

Drugstore.com carries a wide range of natural products, including brands like Seventh Generation, because those are what its customers prefer to buy, according to a spokesperson.

Practically every auto maker, including Toyota, still sells some sort of unwieldy gas-guzzling minivan, SUV or light truck. But when competitors saw the futuristic Prius flying out the door (the company sold 12,500 of them in September, up 24% from a year ago) they began developing hybrids of their own.

The Sierra Club even believes that some oil companies are better than others, and advocates that consumers encourage more responsibility in this industry by directing their gas dollars toward BP and Sunoco and away from Exxon Mobile and ConocoPhillips.

Every day we vote multiple times when we buy stuff. It's worth being educated about where your money's going...

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