Team Nexreg

The EU’s Approach to Greenwashing

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On March 22nd, 2023, the European Commission published a proposal outlining criteria against misleading environmental claims found on product labels.

Background

  • In March 2022 the Commission proposed to update Union consumer laws to ensure that consumers are protected and empowered to contribute actively to the green transition. However, despite the proposal the update has been met with resistance due an increase in commercial and organizational ‘greenwashing’ – marketing a company, label, brand and/or product as environmentally friendly without making any notable sustainability efforts.
  • Despite consumer’s willingness to participate in contributing to a greener and more sustainable economy and environment, The effects of greenwashing have left many consumers distrustful towards commercialized products labelled as eco-friendly or sustainable. During a public forum in 2020 conducted by the EU commission it was determined that the public did not agree with the statement that they trust environmental statements on products due to false claims, lack of transparency and misleading labelling regarding environmental products throughout the European Union.

 

The Proposal’s Objective and Criteria

The role of the proposal is coupled with the EU’s Green Deal initiative – ensuring that consumers are adequately and accurately informed to make better transactional choices thus accelerating the green transition. The initiative will tackle misleading environmental claims, provide consumers with reliable, verifiable, and comparable information alongside reducing greenwashing throughout the European Union. In addition, Commercial organizations are expected to see an increase in consumer sales and recognition. Outlined in the memorandum some of the criteria include regulating environmental labels at European level instead of public labelling schemes, prohibiting the use of aggregate scoring of the product’s overall environmental impact unless stated in EU rules that will seek to establish comparisons based on equivalent data, information, and studies.

 

Nexreg is monitoring the status of these initiatives. Feel free to contact us if you need assistance creating European labels.