Green claims that make us see red.

In greenwashing, as in life, there are seven sins. There's the sin of the hidden trade-off, for example, the sin of vagueness, and the sin of no proof. So says sinsofgreenwashing.org, which takes on companies that offer seemingly green benefits—often at a hefty price tag—with little results. As the green trend continues, companies in almost every industry vie for a piece of the green market, even the embattled General Motors (GM) has taken a chance on its own green product initiative.

But as the field of green products grows, so does the number of impostors. The following is a list of some of the most perplexing green products out there—and an assessment of just how scammy they might be:

Clorox "Green Works" Products

Green Works launched a little more than a year ago, under the pretense of bringing eco-friendly home-cleaning goods, such as all-surface and window cleaners, to the mass market. Several of these products, however, contain corn-based ethanol, which the environmental community has targeted for being neither cost effective nor eco-friendly. A quarter of the items in the Green Works line also include sodium lauryl sulfate—which the company describes as a "coconut-based cleaning agent." That may be true, but, coconut or not, SLS has long been criticized by the scientific community for its not-so-natural effects; the American College of Toxicology described SLS as a known skin irritant in a report published more than 20 years ago.

A few of the wares in the line also contain synthetic dyes, which were included because of what Clorox (CLX) Company representative Aileen Zerrudo described as "consumer feedback."