Read the green small print

An eco-tourism advert has two jobs: it must attract attention and give readers enough information to judge a choice. Trouble begins when the first job hides the second. Words such as ‘green’, ‘natural’ or ‘responsible’ may express a goal, but they do not identify an action, measure or source. A careful reader asks what the operator actually does. Does the plan state a group limit? Does it explain transport, waste handling or contact with wildlife? If a number appears, who recorded it and over what period? Non-defining relative clauses can make an audit clearer. ‘The tour, which uses one shared bus, reports its transport plan’ adds information about an already named tour. ‘Ms Hoa, who coordinates the visit, records the group size’ adds information about a named person. The commas signal that the identity is already clear. Grammar, however, cannot turn an unsupported claim into evidence. A beautiful sentence may still omit the method. Photographs also need context; an image cannot by itself show whether an encounter was natural, distant or staged. A fair audit avoids two extremes. It does not accept every green word, and it does not accuse an operator without evidence. It labels what the advert states, what can be checked and what remains unknown. The final judgement should match the available text: ‘three measures are described, but the overall environmental effect is not established.’ Such wording is less dramatic than ‘perfectly green’, yet it is more useful to a traveller who wants a responsible decision.