ChemRegs Newsletter – March 2023

Greenwashing

The EU Commission has proposed new rules to combat ‘greenwashing’ by obliging companies to prove the environmental claims of their products.

Greenwashing is a marketing tactic used by companies to make their products or services appear more environmentally friendly or sustainable than they actually are. It involves using deceptive or misleading language, symbols, or claims to create a false impression that a product or company is environmentally conscious.

For example, a company may advertise their product as “sustainable”, “eco-friendly” or “all-natural” without any actual evidence to support those claims, or they may use symbols or images of nature or the environment in their marketing materials to give the impression that their product is environmentally friendly, even if it is not.

Greenwashing can mislead consumers into making purchasing decisions based on false or exaggerated claims, while also undermining the efforts of genuinely environmentally conscious companies that are working to reduce their impact on the environment.

The EU Commission has proposed a Green Claims Directive to ensure that EU citizens receive reliable information and do not face misleading greenwashing practices. It will introduce clear rules on how companies should prove their environmental claims and labels.

To help companies to identify, measure and reduce the impacts of goods, services and organisations, the EU Commission, working with scientists in its Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed the ‘Environmental Footprint’ methods.

Using the Environmental Footprint methods, companies can assess the full life cycle impacts of products. Starting from the mining of raw materials, through production and active use, they can measure the emission and resource use up to final waste management. The methods also enable the comparison of impacts for similar products, and provides information on how to communicate the results on the sustainability of products to the public.

Similarly, in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating how products and services claiming to be ‘eco-friendly’ are being marketed, and whether consumers could be being misled.

The CMA has also developed the Green Claims Code, which sets out 6 key points to check whether environmental claims are genuinely green.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has also proposed a package of new measures including investment product sustainability labels and restrictions on how terms like ‘ESG’, ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ can be used.

In parallel with this, it appears that terms such as ‘bio’ and ‘eco’ are to be banned from EU biocidal product names.

The issue of the presence of potentially misleading terms in the trade names of biocidal products was discussed at a meeting of the EU biocides competent authorities (CA) last week, after it was raised at the meeting of the Standing Committee on Biocidal Products in December 2022. This was in the context of a discussion on the Union authorisation of a biocidal product family for which some of the trade names contained the prefix ‘bio’ and also another case of a Union authorisation for which one of the trade names contained the term ‘organic’.

Several EU Member States were of the view that the presence of the term ‘bio’ in the trade name, hence on the label of the biocidal product, might give the user the impression that the product has a better profile and lower risk than other biocidal products, since the term ‘bio’ is perceived by most consumers as equivalent to ‘organic’. These trade names would also be in conflict with the provisions of the Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR).

Article 69(2) of the BPR states that the labels must not be “misleading in respect of the risks from the product to human health, animal health or the environment or its efficacy and, in any case, do not mention the indications ‘low-risk biocidal product’, ‘non-toxic’, ‘harmless’, ‘natural’, ‘environmentally friendly’, ‘animal friendly’ or similar indications.”

Article 25(4) of Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 (CLP Regulation) provides that “Statements such as ‘non-toxic’, ‘non-harmful’, ‘non-polluting’, ‘ecological’ or any other statements indicating that the substance or mixture is not hazardous […] shall not appear on the label or packaging of any substance or mixture”.

It was proposed at the meeting last week to no longer allow ‘bio’, ‘eco’ and other terms likely to be misleading (for instance ‘green’, ‘nature’, ‘natural’, ‘organic’) as prefix or suffix in the trade names of any biocidal product. In this approach the applicant would be requested to change the trade names in question.

EU Member States were invited to discuss the proposals suggested and agree the way forward and have yet to decide how and when existing biocidal product authorisations will be amended.

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