The new ‘’Green Claims’’ Directive puts certifications, the casual use of offsetting, and some corporate green strategies at risk

Author: Raimondo Orsini, Director Sustainable Development Foundation & founding member RSF

I wonder whether Jay Westerveld, a young surfer who first coined the term ‘’greenwashing’’ in 1983, could have imagined the impact of his actions back then.

Westerveld was in a resort in the Fiji Islands when faced with the suggestion, by the resort, to not wash towels every day ‘’in order to protect the planet from pollution and reduce water waste’’, decided to verify if the resort really did care for environmental issues or not. He found out the owners of the resort had invested to build new structures, not considering the profound impact this would have had on the environment, biodiversity, and the surrounding territory, as well as not having mitigation measures in place to compensate for these actions. To Westerveld, it was clear the message the resort left for him in his bathroom, although it was technically a helpful environmental policy, was only used as an economic strategy (reducing costs for the company) and had nothing to do with genuine concern for the environment.

He reasoned, over 40 years ago, what would have then become one of the biggest dangers for the environmental transition of businesses, and called it ‘’green washing’’: a superficial brushtroke of green used to cover actions that were anything but environmentally friendly.

In the ensuing 40 years, as the climate crisis and the pressures of economic development on the planet’s health have grown, and as consumers and citizens have become more aware of and sensitive toward environmental issues, the practice of green washing has purportedly become a full-fledged marketing strategy, increasingly widespread, effective, and profitable for businesses in economic terms. Indeed, as Winston Churchill said, “A lie has already gone round the world before the truth has had a chance to get its pants on’’

Many products “claim” to be green, environmentally friendly, nature-safe, etc., not to mention the casual use of the terms “net zero,” “carbon neutral,” in a jungle of communication where, by virtue of the fact that it is a free, voluntary and unregulated activity, whoever shoots the biggest wins. The whole situation, like a hoax, paradoxically creates an image damaging to those serious companies that actually carry out environmental change, strive to transform products and processes by reducing their impacts, and refuse to bluff openly, paying dearly for their credibility. They often enact so-called green hushing.

In this context, the new EU Directive, the so-called Green Claims, issued last February, finally marks, though long overdue, an important divide, legislatively defining certain forms of greenwashing for the first time that, once the directive itself is implemented by member states (by March 2026) , may be prohibited by national authorities as “misleading advertising,” based on a case-by-case analysis.

It won’t be possible, in this article, to analyze every type of sanctionable environmental claim in the Directive, and thus a focus will be put on three aspects: sustainability branding, offsetting, and green business communication, leaving the meatier part of the Directive surrounding circularity (repairability, planned obsolescence, recyclability, etc.) for the next deep-dive.

As far as sustainability branding is concerned, whether it is referring to products, services, or businesses, what the Directive denotes is very clear. To avoid any trickery to the final customer with regards to the proliferation of auto-certified/produced sustainability branding without a solid scientific foundation (of which, only in the agri-food sector, SUSDEF found a couple hundred in an investigation a few years ago), the Directive indicates that this type of branding will only be allowed if it is backed up by initiatives regulated by public authorities (for example the EU Ecolabel) or that are based on ‘’certification systems’’. 

These certification systems need to have the following characteristics:

  • the system requirements need to be public
  • the system, subject to transparent, fair and non-discriminatory conditions, must be open to all economic operators willing and able to comply with its requirements;
  • system requirements must have been developed by the system owner in consultation with recognized experts and stakeholders;
  • the system must establish procedures for dealing with cases of non-compliance with the requirements and provide for revocation or suspension of the economic operator’s use of the sustainability label in the event of non-compliance with the requirements of the system;
  • Monitoring of the economic operator’s compliance with the requirements of the system must be the subject of an objective procedure and is carried out by a third party whose competence and independence, both from the system owner and the economic operator, are based on international, EU, or national standards and procedures.

With a calculation based only on our perception and not on actual statistics, which we will have to wait a few years for, we believe that at least half of the voluntary marks and certifications that exist to date do not comply with these requirements and therefore, if they do not comply, will be banned as deceptive advertising.

On the other hand, with regard to offsetting greenhouse gas emissions through voluntary carbon credits (the so-called carbon offsetting), the use of which for communications has already been the subject of much criticism from the most observant media (for example, an important and well-informed campaign by the Guardian two years ago) and from Advertising Regulators (such as the Dutch and British ones which have recently condemned some airlines for claims of “zero-emission flights” thanks to offsets) the Directive clearly says that claims about products and services such as “climate neutral,” “certified carbon neutral,” “carbon positive,” “net zero emissions, ” etc.  will only be allowed if they are based on the actual life cycle impact of the product (or service) and not on offsetting greenhouse gas emissions outside the product (or service) value chain.

Under this provision, it will no longer be possible, for example, to claim that an airplane trip or attendance at a rock concert is carbon neutral or net zero emissions if this is due to offsetting emissions (through actions such as planting or reforestation) because “such a claim would give consumers the false impression that that product or service has no climate impact,” which is not true.

Finally, we move on to the topic of green environmental assertions by companies, for example in green business strategies, a very popular tool in the form of green commitments and environmental targets communicated to the media and consumers. Here, too, we are at a turning point. In fact, the Directive, in Article 1, expressly extends the regulation of environmental assertions to the communication of future environmental performance, prohibiting those that, on a case-by-case basis, will not be substantiated by:

  • clear, objective, publicly available and verifiable commitments and goals;
  • defined in a detailed and realistic implementation plan indicating how these pledges and goals will be achieved and which economic resources will be allocated for this purpose. This implementation plan should include all relevant elements necessary to fulfill the commitments, such as budgetary resources and available technological developments.
  • be verified by a third-party expert, who should be independent of the economic operator, free from conflicts of interest, and with experience and expertise in environmental issues, and who should be able to periodically verify the economic operator’s progress against these commitments and targets, including milestones for achieving them, and make the results available to consumers.

Thus, it will not be enough for a company to announce that it will be carbon neutral by 2035, for example, or that it will promise to reduce plastic consumption to zero by 2030. To avoid falling into the trap of green washing, according to the Directive, it will have to publish a credible plan, indicating the projects and technologies it will actually implement to reach that target, what resources it will have budgeted to achieve the target, what intermediate results it will have achieved over time, certified by a third party.

Surely Jay Westerveld, as he surfed in Fiji, would not have imagined that he had “flushed out” the fundamentals of a marketing strategy that would become a planetary practice, nor that he had coined an expression that would be adopted in laws and books for decades to come. This Directive, although long overdue, concretely helps to take steps in the direction indicated by the young surfer, both culturally and legally.

He, in the meantime, has not founded a consulting firm specializing in green communication by exploiting his intuition economically, but has dedicated himself to preserving and regenerating endangered ecosystems and protecting rare endangered species, such as small cricket frogs or clam shrimps.

Quiet passion. Concrete results. The opposite of green washing.