Who wouldn't want to cash in on a trend? Now that green is all the rage, it can be hard to distinguish the restaurants and groceries that are really making substantial changes to lower their carbon footprint from the ones that are just trying to cash in on the public's interest in all things sustainable.

The latter often engage in a process called greenwashing. Greenwashing includes all actions that are adopted in an attempt to appear to be green, without any real consideration as to what impact, if any, these actions will actually have on the environment.

Take plastic bags (please...). True green practice in this area means not contributing to the world trash problem by handing out plastic bags to your customers. There are environmental problems with paper bags too, primarily in the energy spent to produce and recycle them, but they aren't going to last past your lifetime in a landfill, leaving your children and grandchildren to solve the problem that you (we) created.

Sam's Club is an example of a store that has adopted a truly green practice in this area by refusing to supply bags to its customers. Although this decision was adopted as a cost-cutting, rather than an environmental practice, the outcome is the same. As a result of Sam's decision, fewer bags end up in landfills. Fewer find their way into the ocean. Sam's Club's decision to leave the bagging to the customers is a truly green practice, not greenwashing.

Following Sam's Club in environmental accountability are those stores that will give bags out, but strongly encourage customers not to take them by levying a charge if they do. This practice reduces the number of bags that end up in the trees and in the ocean by reducing the number that leave the store. Hits to the wallet can have more clout than hits to the heart, for some reason, so stores that charge for bags (like IKEA and Earthfare) suddenly see increases in the number of customers that are willing to carry their purchases out in their hands instead of in a bag, or in a cart to their car where they can be loaded into that forgotten reusable bag stuffed under the seat.

Green washing stores, on the other hand, place a stock of reusable bags near the cash register to try to sell them to people who care about the environment but do nothing to actually encourage their use. This practice is intended to produce profit for the store rather than to reduce the significant environmental harm caused by practices that reflect our valuing of convenience over care.

As we eat our way across the state, we've seen lots of evidence of greenwashing. Some of it seems to be an attempt to mask misconduct behind a beneficent facade. Some of it seems to be true ignorance of the issues, such as when restaurateurs proudly tell us they buy local - at the Dekalb INTERNATIONAL Farmer's Market.

We're not here to call people out on our perceptions of their misdeeds. We're here to thank people who are doing the right thing by the environment (and by their customers, who happen to live in the environment). We just wanted to warn you not to be fooled by the easy answers. When you spot greenwashing, you might want to let food managers know you're not buying it. Then don't buy it.