greenwashing at its worst: focal point “naturals”

Focal Point Lighting just released a product line that really upsets me: According to their spec sheets, their new “Naturals” line is nothing more than vinyl stickers of fake wood grain slapped onto their standard aluminum and plastic lighting fixtures. This despite the marketing for the series being filled with images of bucolic forests and endless stock photography of actual wood.

As someone who vocally advocated for over a decade for the need to embrace natural biomaterials and simplify LED fixture design to radically decarbonize and detoxify LED architectural lighting, this just disgusts me – especially since I spec’d a lot of Focal Point when I was a lighting designer back in Boston.

Focal Point: WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?

Are companies with genuinely innovative products (cough…cough…LIGHTLY) that are actually made of non-toxic, carbon sequestering biomaterials suddenly eating into your specifications? And your response is to…SLAP SOME VINYL STICKERS ON YOUR PRODUCTS AND CALL THEM “NATURE-INSPIRED”?

Are you proud of this launch?

I hope other lighting designers in my network speak out. I know there are many of you who are genuinely concerned about specifying truly-eco friendly products. Grossly misleading, greenwashed marketing of “natural” products like this only damages the industry and stymies companies who actually risk investment in real biomaterial and circular economy innovation to make a better future.

WHAT THEY’RE ADVERTISING VS THE ACTUAL SPEC SHEET.