Are you really "going green?"

The labels "Eco-friendly," "Organic," and "Natural" adorn countless products in the grocery stores these days, but who oversees how companies use those marketing tools?

The answer, as it turns out, may be nobody.

A recent report, published in USA Today, highlights a lack of oversight when it comes to companies touting their planet-protecting products. It comes as no surprise to local "green" experts.

"Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon now," said Mike Asher, General Manager of the Rollin' Oats store in St. Petersburg. "(They) call things 'green' and call things 'natural' that really aren't."

Asher says you can make more of a difference by educating yourself online and shopping only from reputable sources that do significant research themselves.

Matthew Phillips, who organizes the local eco-friendly festival "Gulfport Goes Green," says he's seen this before.

"We're looking where we were a few years ago when 'organic' was being thrown out by people and there wasn't a definition for 'organic,' " he said, adding that the FTC eventually stepped in and defined the label. " 'Green' is in that space now."

The report continues:

Since May 2000, the FTC has taken legal action against only three companies for violating the guidelines. All three complaints were announced June 9, the day of a congressional hearing about environmental marketing.

"There has been little to no enforcement of the 1992 guides," says environmental consultant Kevin Tuerff, whose company started a website aimed at exposing ads with questionable environmental claims. "They need to pick up the pace."

From 1992 to 2000, the FTC generally filed two or more complaints a year, but enforcement dropped off under President Bush.

The FTC's James Kohm acknowledges the agency hasn't aggressively enforced its main environmental guidelines in recent years, in part because of a lack of resources. The agency has, however, cracked down on energy-related claims, such as products that purport to raise a car's gas mileage, he says.

The FTC "is a small agency with a huge mission and ... very limited resources," he says. The 2009 budget for the FTC, which also fights identity theft, credit fraud and monopolies, was $259 million.

More new cases like those announced earlier in the month are to be expected, Kohm says.

The companies cited by the commission June 9 improperly advertised their products as "biodegradable." All three cases were filed May 20.

Environmental marketing has exploded recently: a survey in the last year by environmental marketer TerraChoice of 12 large U.S. stores found more than 1,700 products that boasted of green credentials. Eco-friendly claims are made by items ranging from liquor to sport-utility vehicles to pesticides.

One-third of consumers rely on labels to decide whether a product is environmentally friendly, says Suzanne Shelton, whose firm polled Americans this spring on their green-buying habits. "If the FTC isn't regulating that, then consumers are possibly being sold a bill of goods," she says.