Being green used to be purely virtue signaling. The idea 'be the change you want to see' combined with (a few years ago) the higher costs of green products have lead to 'look what I am willing to sacrifice for the environment'. Once going green is no longer a sacrifice, it loses its value as virtue signaling. Moreover, as it used to be the case that green was more expensive, much of the marketing really focused on this virtue signaling. Because being green needed to be a unique selling point to make it worth it.

It seems like this perception of green hasn't caught up with reality yet. This also explains the (worry about) accusations of green-washing. If a company announces some green improvement in their products, people read that as virtue signaling. Then, when it comes out the company has not made green sacrifices elsewhere, that is seen as not virtuous. Problem is, their announcement was not 'we are making sacrifices to be green' but 'we made improvements that are green'. But that is not how people read such announcements.