Environmental or ‘green’ claims are any claims that suggest a product, service or brand is better for the planet than an alternative. As demand for corporate sustainability grows, these claims can give businesses a significant competitive advantage.

Green claims are good – they help us make informed decisions and choose the more sustainable option where possible. The problem is that these green claims aren’t always honest – and those that aren’t are deemed ‘greenwashing’.

To avoid the appearance of greenwashing, it’s important to have a good understanding of the terminology. Very often, businesses can slip into greenwashing unintentionally by underestimating the seriousness of their claims.

This usually involves using vague language like ‘eco-friendly’, ‘all-natural’ or going one step further and saying something like, “We’re working towards a net zero future”, without having any emission reduction strategy in place. Missteps like this seem innocent enough – but because they carry so much weight with the general public, they’ll come under increasingly high scrutiny in the future.

The issue right now is that these terms have no legal definitions. However, in addition to the ‘Green Claims Code’, the CMA recommended a list of actions to the government – including releasing legislative definitions for potentially misleading terms like ‘recyclable’ and ‘carbon neutral’. Hopefully, this gives marketers and advertisers better guidance on what this language means and how to use it.

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Emissions claims (like carbon neutral or net zero) carry a lot of weight with customers and stakeholders, but they currently have no comprehensive legal definitions.