EU Green Claims Directive

Are your products marketed as ‘eco-friendly,’ ‘natural,’ ‘recycled,’ ‘biodegradable’ and so on? 🐅♻️🗑️🌿

Can you substantiate these labels?

The 2020 European Commission study found that over 53 % of environmental claims in the EU are vague, misleading, or unfounded. Additionally, 40 % of these claims were found to be unsubstantiated. 🚨

This casts a negative light on sustainability work and results in ‘greenwashing,’ which leads to reduced customer trust in environmental claims. The most important stakeholders that are impacted by this are the consumers and companies which generate genuine and positive sustainability impacts.

Thus, in March 2023 the EU ‘Green Claims’ Directive was proposed in order to tackle the widespread #greenwashing and safeguard the consumers.

Two weeks ago, the Directive received overwhelming support from MEPs who voted in its favour 593:21. Shortly, the Directive will seek approval from the EU Council, and it is expected to be enforced in 2026. 👏🏻

The aim of the ‘Green Claims’ Directive is to improve the consumers’ ability to make informed decisions and to make the environmental performance of products more comparable and verifiable.

This has implications for the creation of new environmental labels, especially privately owned ones, as they will face stricter regulation. The currently existing environmental labels will have to comply with the Directive.

A welcome addition to the Directive is that climate-related claims based on carbon offsetting will no longer be permissible, such as ‘carbon-neutral service’ or ‘climate-neutral product.’ 💨💨

Moreover, producers will have to supply information on repairability of the products and their durability (e.g., to prevent undue replacement of products despite longer material lifespans). 🪡

We have gathered some tips on what you can do to prepare, but we would be more than happy to discuss the changes further and suggest tailor-made solutions.