1. The Coating
I found it by accident. Ran my finger along the underside of the jar lid while trying to scrape out the last bit of jam. Felt something soft. Looked at it.
White ring, about a centimeter wide. Plastisol coating. According to the Container and Packaging Supply Company, this is a PVC-based polymer with plasticizers—industry standard since the late 1960s.1
Plastic. In the plastic-free jar.
The vendor at the farmers market had told me it was plastic-free. I'd paid £4 extra because of it. Glass container. Handwritten label. Woman who grew the berries herself.
Everything visible said: trustworthy.
Everything invisible said: plastisol.
I brought the lid back the following week.
2. The Seller Didn't Know
She went pale when I showed her.
"That's plastic?"
I nodded.
She held the lid close, examining the white ring like she'd never noticed it before. "My supplier told me glass jars, metal lids. I thought—I paid extra specifically to avoid plastic. I charged you extra for the same reason."
She wasn't lying. I could see it in her face. Three years selling these jars. Never once checked what was under the metal.
Why would she? The jar was glass. The lid was metal. That's what the supplier told her. That's what she saw when she looked.
Glass meant transparent. Metal meant not plastic. Farmers market meant someone accountable.
The system worked perfectly. She trusted the supplier. I trusted the glass. The plastisol was there the whole time.
I started investigating. Not just jar lids. The pattern.
3. The Baby Wipes
WaterWipes. "The world's purest baby wipes." Marketed as "just two ingredients"—water and fruit extract.
The transparency signal was perfect. Two ingredients. You can see the list right there on the package. Simple. Clean. Nothing to hide.
According to a 2025 class action filing documented by Top Class Actions, independent laboratory testing found microplastics at levels 387 times higher than the control sample.2
387 times.
The signal said: pure.
The reality said: contaminated at levels so extreme they required independent testing to discover.
I read the class action filing. The company didn't lie about the ingredients. Water and fruit extract were accurate. They just didn't mention the microplastics that entered during manufacturing. The label told the truth. The product failed.
The signal exhausted scrutiny. Why question "just two ingredients"? The transparency was complete.
4. The Clean Diesel
Volkswagen Clean Diesel passed EPA emissions certifications for seven years. The cars had "Clean Diesel" branded on the vehicle. They had EPA certification. They had audits.
According to the EPA, during normal operation they emitted nitrogen oxides up to 40 times the legal standard.3
The defeat device software detected when the car was being tested. It activated full emissions controls during testing. The rest of the time—when people were actually driving—the car polluted at illegal levels.
The certification was real. The audits were conducted. The transparency apparatus functioned perfectly.
I read the EPA documentation three times. I kept thinking I was missing something. How does a car pass certification for seven years while violating the standard by 40x?
The answer: the system verified the test, not the reality.
Auditors checked that emissions controls worked during testing conditions. They didn't check normal driving. That wasn't their job.
Everyone followed the rules. The car failed anyway.
5. The Pattern
Three cases. Different products. Different industries. Different regulatory frameworks.
Same structure.
Visibility signals verification. Glass jar means you can see the jam, therefore someone checked everything. "Just two ingredients" means nothing's hidden, therefore it's pure. EPA certification means it's been tested, therefore it's clean.
The signal exhausts scrutiny. Your brain thinks: if it's this transparent, someone must have verified it. If someone already checked, I don't need to. The signal itself becomes the verification.
The product fails while the signal passes. Plastisol coating under the metal lid. Microplastics in the pure wipes. Illegal emissions in the certified car. The transparency was real. The substance was false.
This isn't a series of scandals. This is how transparency operates.
6. The Architecture
I wanted to find who designed this. The villain. The conspiracy.
I found something more interesting. A regulatory choice. Documented. Debated. Decided.
In October 2010, the Federal Trade Commission proposed revisions to the Green Guides—the regulatory framework for environmental marketing claims in the US.4
The proposal was open for public comment. According to the FTC's 2010 press release, nearly 340 unique comments were submitted, with over 5,000 total responses.
One of the key debates: should environmental claims require mandatory third-party certification?
Multiple commenters argued for it. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition. The National Resources Defense Council. Various consumer protection groups. Their argument was consistent: voluntary disclosure without mandatory verification creates transparency theater. Signals without substance. Exhaustion without scrutiny.
The FTC considered it. They documented the arguments. They reviewed international precedents where third-party certification is required.
In October 2012, the FTC published the final revised Green Guides.5
Mandatory third-party verification was not included.
The decision was documented: "Third-party certification does not insulate an advertiser from Commission scrutiny, nor does it eliminate an advertiser's obligation to ensure for itself that the claims communicated by the certification are substantiated and not deceptive."
Translation: even if we required certification, brands would still be responsible. So we won't require it. Voluntary is sufficient.
This wasn't an oversight. This was a choice.
7. The Second Choice
In 2022, the FTC opened a new comment period.6 This time: carbon offset and climate-related claims.
Over 7,000 responses.
The consensus was overwhelming. Carbon offset claims need mandatory third-party verification. The potential for greenwashing without it is too high.
The FTC summarized: "There was general support among commenters that parties that use offsets to make climate change claims should be required to use some sort of independent certification scheme that verifies the quality of the offsets."
General support. From commenters. For mandatory verification.
And then this line: "Some commenters argued that the FTC should restrict such verification to specific trusted sources; most argued that this would be outside the FTC's authority."
Outside the FTC's authority.
Not "we don't think it's necessary." Outside our authority.
The FTC's authority, under Section 5 of the FTC Act, is to prevent "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce." Their authority includes requiring substantiation of advertising claims.
But requiring how substantiation occurs—requiring third-party verification rather than self-certification—that would exceed their mandate.
So the 2024 update to the Green Guides, still pending as of January 2026, proposes guidance on carbon offset claims. It recommends disclosure. It recommends transparency. It recommends verification "should" be used.
Should. Not must.
Twice considered. Twice rejected. Documented in public record.
8. The Logic
The regulatory philosophy is consistent: disclosure over verification, guidance over mandate, voluntary over compulsory.
The logic goes like this:
- Transparency enables scrutiny
- If information is disclosed, consumers can verify
- If consumers can verify, markets self-correct
- Therefore, mandate disclosure, not verification
The logic is elegant. The logic assumes scrutiny is free.
It's not.
9. The Exhaustion
An American adult makes an estimated thousands of decisions daily. A 2007 Cornell study found participants averaging 221 decisions on food alone.
According to research published in the Journal of Health Psychology, decision fatigue is real.7 When you make repeated decisions, your executive function depletes. Research shows this manifests as impaired capacity for trade-offs, tendency toward passive roles in choices, selections that appear impulsive.
That's not poor character. That's cognitive depletion.
By the time I reached the farmers market—weekend afternoon, after grocery shopping, meal planning, checking seven jam brands at three stores—I was depleted.
The glass jar said: You can stop checking now.
The handwritten label said: Someone you can trust made this.
The farmers market stall said: This has been verified by context.
And I wanted to believe it. I needed to. Because the alternative—verifying the chemical composition of the lid liner, researching plastisol standards, calling suppliers, checking regulatory definitions—was cognitively impossible in that moment.
The signal wasn't just information. It was permission to stop.
That's not a failure of transparency. That's transparency working exactly as designed.
10. The Economic Structure
Let me show you the economics.
The jam jar retails for £8. Profit margin: maybe £2.
Cost to signal transparency:
- Glass jar: £0.40
- Handwritten label: £0.10
- Farmers market stall rental: £30/day (split across ~50 jars = £0.60/jar)
- Total transparency theater: under £1.10 per jar
Cost to verify transparency:
- Traceability technology (IoT tracking): $100+ per unit
- Global data fees: monthly subscription
- Staff training: upfront cost
- System integration: significant
- Supply chain auditing: requires third-party auditors at each tier
- Total verification infrastructure: multiples of the product's entire margin
The economic incentive isn't verification. It's trust signals.
This is true across industries. WaterWipes doesn't need to test for microplastics—testing costs more than preventing contamination, and "just two ingredients" sells without testing. Volkswagen doesn't need continuous emissions monitoring during actual driving—the certification test is cheaper than the continuous monitoring, and the EPA certification sells cars.
The market optimizes for what's measured. What's measured is the signal, not the substance.
11. The Designed Exhaustion
Here's how transparency signals actually function:
Step 1: Visibility creates the sense that "someone checked this."
Glass jar. You can see the jam. Handwritten label. You can see the person who made it. "Just two ingredients." You can see exactly what's in it. EPA certification. You can see it passed testing.
Visibility equals verification, your brain concludes.
Step 2: The sense of being checked exhausts your scrutiny.
Your brain: If someone already checked this, I don't need to. I can conserve attention for things that aren't pre-verified.
The signal itself becomes the verification.
Step 3: You grant trust not because you verified, but because you're tired.
This is the critical moment. This is when the transparency signal does its job. You're depleted from 221 food decisions. You're standing in front of signals that look trustworthy. Your brain says: Accept the signal. Move on.
Step 4: The signal becomes permission to stop looking.
The more transparent the gesture, the more effectively it ends scrutiny. Glass jar works better than opaque plastic because you can see there's nothing to hide. "Just two ingredients" works better than a long list because simplicity equals honesty. EPA certification works better than no certification because official equals verified.
Each signal is optimized to trigger trust-granting in an exhausted consumer.
Step 5: Brands optimize for the signal, not the substance.
Because the signal is what sells. Because verification is expensive and invisible. Because consumers grant trust at the signal stage, before verification happens.
WaterWipes doesn't sell because it's actually pure. It sells because "just two ingredients" exhausts suspicion.
VW Clean Diesel doesn't sell because it's actually clean. It sells because "EPA certified" exhausts scrutiny.
The jam jar doesn't sell because it's plastic-free. It sells because glass + handwritten + farmers market exhausts attention.
The more transparent the gesture, the less we actually verify.
This is the inversion everyone misses.
Transparency is supposed to enable scrutiny. It actually exhausts scrutiny. The better the signal, the more effectively it stops you from checking.
12. The System
The FTC's regulatory philosophy assumes transparency enables scrutiny. It does the opposite.
When the FTC chose voluntary disclosure over mandatory verification in 2012, they created the conditions for this architecture. Not accidentally. Predictably.
Here's what the choice enabled:
Brands optimize for cheap signals rather than expensive verification. Rational. The signal is what sells. Verification is invisible.
Consumers conserve finite attention by accepting trust signals. Rational. Scrutiny is expensive. Exhaustion is real.
Regulators avoid expensive enforcement by requiring disclosure, not verification. Rational. Enforcement requires resources. Guidance is cheaper.
Suppliers repeat claims without checking. Rational. Checking costs more than the margin. The tier-three manufacturer uses plastisol because it's industry standard. They tell tier-two it's a metal lid. Tier-two tells tier-one it's metal. Tier-one tells the jam seller it's glass and metal. The seller tells me it's plastic-free.
Every actor does the right thing. Every actor behaves rationally within their incentive structure. The result is systemic deception.
No conspiracy needed. Just thousands of individual optimizations, each perfectly logical, operating within a regulatory framework that chose disclosure over verification after considering 340 public comments in 2010 and over 7,000 comments in 2022.
I went looking for a villain. I found something more interesting: a system where everyone followed the rules and the rules don't work.
13. The Trap
The trap isn't that transparency fails. The trap is that transparency works exactly as designed—and the design is deceptive.
The regulatory choice assumed transparency enables scrutiny. That assumption requires infinite attention. Attention is finite.
When attention is finite, transparency doesn't enable scrutiny. It exhausts it.
The better the signal, the more effectively it stops you from checking. The more "transparent" the gesture, the less you actually verify.
Glass jars. "Just two ingredients." EPA certification. Farmers market stalls. Handwritten labels. Compostable logos. "Natural." "Sustainable." "Certified."
They're all transparency signals. They all say: You can stop checking now.
And because you're exhausted from hundreds of daily decisions, because verification is economically impossible for products with £2 margins, because the regulator chose voluntary disclosure over mandatory verification—you stop checking.
Not because you're gullible. Because doubt is expensive. Because the system is designed so that your exhaustion becomes the mechanism of trust.
The plastisol coating is under the lid. The microplastics are in the wipes. The illegal emissions happen during normal driving. The transparency signals pass. The products fail.
The trap is the architecture itself.
14. The Revelation
I still buy jam at the farmers market. I'm not advocating boycotts or paranoia. I'm showing you the structure.
The jam seller didn't lie. The supplier didn't know. The engineer followed industry standards. The regulator chose voluntary guidance after documented debate. The FTC considered mandatory verification twice—in 2010 and 2022—and twice decided it exceeded their mandate or wasn't necessary.
Everyone did their job correctly.
The result is a system where "plastic-free" means whatever the seller believes it means, where "just two ingredients" can coexist with 387x microplastic contamination, where EPA certification can pass cars that emit 40x the legal limit during actual use.
Legal. Certified. Transparent. False.
This isn't a failure of transparency. This is transparency as trap. The signal exhausts scrutiny by design. The more visible the gesture, the less you check the substance. The regulatory framework enables this by choosing disclosure over verification.
Twice considered. Twice rejected. Documented in Federal Register notices. Public comments reviewed. Alternatives weighed. Decision made.
I almost admire the efficiency.
15. The Calibration
I don't have a solution. I can't expand your attention budget. I can't make verification sustainable as an individual practice. I can't change the regulatory framework that chose voluntary disclosure after considering hundreds of thousands of public comments.
What I can offer is calibration.
Recognize the moment when a signal is asking you to stop looking.
Glass jar. Handwritten label. "Just two ingredients." EPA certification. Each one says: Someone checked this. You can trust.
That's the moment. That's when the signal does its job.
Know the difference between "I verified this" and "I'm too tired to question this."
You're not verifying the glass jar. You're too exhausted from 221 food decisions to question it. That's not failure. That's human. But it's not verification.
Understand that everyone in the chain is repeating what they were told.
The jam seller. The supplier. The tier-three manufacturer. They're all passing along claims without checking because checking costs more than the product margin. The plastisol is industry standard. No one mentions it because everyone assumes someone else would ask if it mattered.
Accept that transparency signals are designed to exhaust you, not inform you.
The better the signal, the more effectively it stops scrutiny. This isn't a bug. This is the system working as designed within a regulatory framework that chose voluntary disclosure over mandatory verification.
That's not cynicism. That's clarity.
16. The Seeing
Every time I see a glass jar now, I think: where does the lid come from?
Every time someone says "certified," I think: who checked? What did they actually verify? The test or the reality?
Every time transparency is performed, I think: is this designed to exhaust me?
The plastisol coating was there the whole time. White ring on the underside of the metal lid. Standard. Legal. Undisclosed.
The microplastics were in the "pure" wipes. 387 times higher than control. The product marketed with the cleanest possible signal. "Just two ingredients."
The illegal emissions happened during normal driving. Every day for seven years. The certification was real. The emissions were 40 times over.
Legal. Certified. Transparent. False.
No one lied. That's almost worse. A system where everyone behaves honestly, where sellers trust suppliers who trust manufacturers who follow industry standards, where regulators choose voluntary guidance after documented public comment, where transparency signals are optimized to exhaust scrutiny rather than enable it—that's more insidious than fraud.
Because fraud you can prosecute. System architecture you can only see.
I still don't know who to blame.
But I know this: transparency is the trap. Not the absence of transparency. Transparency itself. The signal that exhausts your scrutiny by making you believe someone already checked.
The FTC considered mandatory verification in 2010. Commenters argued for it. The FTC chose voluntary disclosure. In 2022, facing carbon offset claims, commenters again argued for mandatory verification. The FTC again chose voluntary guidance, citing authority concerns.
Those choices created the architecture. Not in conspiracy. Through documented regulatory philosophy: disclosure over verification, guidance over mandate, should over must.
The glass jar worked. The handwritten label worked. The EPA certification worked. They all did exactly what they were optimized to do: make us stop checking.
The signal exhausted scrutiny. The substance failed. The system was designed this way.
Legal. Voluntary. Insufficient.
Someone designed this. Not the jam seller. Not the packaging engineer. All of them, collectively, including the regulatory body that twice chose guidance over mandate after public comment.
I can see the architecture now.
The seedling logo on compostable cups. The "just two ingredients" on baby wipes. The "Clean Diesel" on Volkswagens. The "plastic-free" on glass jars with plastisol liners. The "certified organic" that doesn't test for pesticide residue. The "carbon neutral" that offsets without verification.
They're all transparency signals. Optimized to exhaust scrutiny. Operating in a regulatory framework that chose voluntary disclosure over mandatory verification after considering hundreds of thousands of comments.
Transparency doesn't enable scrutiny. It exhausts it.
That's not a scandal about jar lids. That's how we relate to all information in an exhaustion-based economy with finite attention and a regulatory framework that chose disclosure over verification.
Now you know where the gap is. Between the signal and the substance. Between disclosure and verification. Between what you can see and what actually matters.
That's not nothing.
Once you see it, you can't unsee it.