Banning greenwashing from the EU: that’s the goal of European Directive 2024/825/EU, known as the “Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition,” or rather the “Green Claims Directive.” Approved in March 2024, it will be effective in September 2026, after it has been implemented into the Italian legal system. The legislation imposes numerous bans and restrictions on companies in communicating their commitment to the environment in every medium, from product packaging to advertisements.
In recent years, in fact, the use of terms such as “sustainable,” “biodegradable,” and “zero impact” had literally exploded. Companies seemed to be obliged to declare their commitment to the environment to sell a product. But the claims were not always in line with reality or, if nothing else, were rather vague.
From two studies carried out by the European Commission, in 2014 and 2020, out of 150 green claims made by European companies, 53.3 percent were vague, misleading, or unfounded; 40 percent were not substantiated by solid evidence; and 50 percent had gaps in verifiability. These are the data that led to the European Commission’s intervention, with a directive designed to ensure greater accuracy and completeness of information provided by companies about their impact on the environment.
Green claim: in attesa della direttiva Ue, i controlli li facciamo noi
Green claims: from words to pictures
First of all, the directive specifies what it means by green claims:
“any message or representation that is not compulsory under European Union or national law.”
“Claims” that can take any form, the regulations specify, including pictures, symbols, trademarks, company or product names, that describe a “positive or zero impact on the environment or that is less harmful to the environment than other products […] or has improved its impact over time.”
What the green claims directive bans
The European directive establishes a number of new bans on green claims wherever they are found. Here are the main ones. It will be banned:
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Exhibiting sustainability labels that are not established by public authorities.
Studies conducted by the European Commission had identified as many as 232 eco-labels in the EU, “with widely varying levels of transparency.” The new directive cleans up this excess of environmental certifications, establishes that companies can use only those based on a certification scheme set up by public authorities, and bans “self-certified” sustainability labels, for which there is no third-party verification or regular monitoring of compliance with basic requirements.
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Use generic terms that refer to environmental excellence, which the company is unable to demonstrate on the same medium
The directive makes a long list of terms that until now were quietly displayed on labels and advertisements, such as “environmentally friendly,” “eco-friendly,” “green,” “nature-friendly,” “ecological,” and “biodegradable.” They may no longer be used in corporate communications “unless the excellence of the environmental performance of the product or service or organization that is the subject of the claim is demonstrated,” “through the same medium” in which the term is used.
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Ascribing an environmental assertion to a product as a whole or to the company as a whole, when it concerns only a specific aspect of the product or a specific element of the company’s business.
If only one component can claim environmental benefits, they cannot be extended to the entire product. That is, an environmental claim must be accurate and not mislead the consumer, who must clearly understand what that claim is referring to, whether the entire product or a part of it.
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Stating that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, based on offsetting pollutant emissions.
A company can only talk about the environmental impact and carbon footprint of its product based on carbon reductions and removals within its value chain.
Thus, the directive specifies, “it is always prohibited to make a claim about the ‘carbon neutrality’ of a product by relying (even in part) on CO2 offsets through carbon credits.”.
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“Passing off” as its own exclusive element a requirement imposed by law
That is, if the legislator imposes constraints, the company cannot claim to comply with them as its own distinguishing characteristic. For example, it is misleading to claim that a deodorant is “CFC-free” when all deodorants must be CFC-free. In this case, the company must make it clear that it is not the only one with this characteristic, with a statement such as, “Like other similar products, this one also does not contain CFCs,” or “it is CFC-free as required by law”.
