The European Commission has released the first draught of its new Green Claims Directive, with more details and recommendations regarding what constitutes greenwashing in particular industries are expected to follow. We noted earlier this year that Euractiv had obtained a draught of these EU ideas through a leak, with the intention of assisting customers in making better product decisions and preventing corporations from making deceptive green claims.
Action is necessary, according to the commission, which supports this assertion with data from its own research from 2020, which revealed that 53.3% of EU environmental statements were deemed to be ambiguous, misleading, or unjustified, with a disturbing 40% being unsupported. In the end, though, the idea will be applicable to a wide range of businesses and cover all kinds of goods and services. The European Commission has released the first draught of its new Green Claims Directive, with more details and recommendations regarding what constitutes greenwashing in particular industries are expected to follow. We noted earlier this year that Euractiv had obtained a draught of these EU ideas through a leak, with the intention of assisting customers in making better product decisions and preventing corporations from making deceptive green claims.
Action is necessary, according to the commission, which supports this assertion with data from its own research from 2020, which revealed that 53.3% of EU environmental statements were deemed to be ambiguous, misleading, or unjustified, with a disturbing 40% being unsupported. In the end, though, the idea will be applicable to a wide range of businesses and cover all kinds of goods and services. must adhere to minimal standards for both the way they support their assertions and the way they present them. The draught language states: “Consumers and other market actors cannot properly leverage their purchasing decisions to promote better environmental performance if environmental claims are not credible, comparable, and verifiable. In a similar vein, incentives for improving environmental performance—which often go hand in hand with efficiency improvements and cost savings for businesses along the supply chain—are hampered by a lack of trustworthy, comparable, and verifiable information. The confusion that results from the internal market’s absence of a shared reference makes these problems worse.
The commission also aims to clarify the current perplexing issue surrounding ‘Ecolabels’. These product labels on environmental issues are meant to educate consumers. evaluation of a product’s environmental credentials as well as the producer’s performance. More than 230 distinct labels are now in use, according to the EU Commission, and new regulations will be implemented to address consumer confusion and mistrust issues. New public labelling programmes won’t be permitted as a result unless they are created at the EU level. Additionally, in order to be approved, any private initiatives must demonstrate greater environmental ambition than those already in place.
It comes in response to a recent analysis by the Changing Markets Foundation, which found that 51 claims made over the course of the previous 12 months by food and beverage firms do not adhere to the Directive’s criteria. Furthermore, the temperature is a factor in 80% of security breaches. carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases like methane have an influence on goods or businesses.
The Foundation is urging the EU to expressly prohibit businesses from using phrases like “climate positive,” “carbon-neutral,” and Amazon’s “Climate Pledge Friendly” filter. In addition, it urges the EU to take into account include images as well as words in the Directive, citing instances when dairy and beef corporations depict cows grazing even if their own records demonstrate that they are at least partially fed with artificial feeds. Reactions were mixed, with some claiming the suggestions had been “watered down.”
In an interview with Edie, Richard Gardiner, the head of EU policy for the World Benchmarking Alliance, recognised that the first step in combating commercial fraud is to expose it. According to him, the Regulation is a positive step in exposing and thwarting greenwashing. To make sure businesses are living up to their promises, it is crucial that their statements regarding the environment and related social issues be strong, evident, and supported. Information regarding what businesses are actually doing must be comprehensible to consumers so they can compare it and believe it. He did raise some questions about accountability, though: “The tremendous scope of global corporate power means that certain corporations are more influential than entire countries – and it’s only with adequate responsibility that companies will take the urgent action needed to protect people and the earth.
Andrew Martin, executive vice president of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), who was tasked by the European Commission to oversee brand engagement in the methodology’s development, assessed the situation in a worrying way. It is seen as a “missed opportunity” for the European Union to demonstrate leadership and offer a uniform, obligatory policy for businesses. “It appears to lack legal certainty at first glance,” he continued. Because it is a directive rather than a mandate, there is a chance that various countries would interpret it differently, which might actually harm the single market.
According to Margaux Le Gallou, manager of the non-profit Environmental Coalition on Standards’ project for environmental information and assessment, CNBC: “Taking on false green claims is essential to ensuring that customers receive trustworthy information and are equipped to make sustainable decisions. Sadly, the new Directive won’t offer much clarity to consumers or businesses and will just make things more complicated in the absence of standardised approaches at the EU level. authorities responsible for market surveillance. The majority of green claims made today are just untrue, and the idea is far from being truly green.
