The executive branch of the European Union announced on Wednesday plans to crack down on companies that stamp false or misleading “green” labels on their products.
The European Commission’s aim is to protect consumers from products boasting “misleading environmental claims” — a marketing ploy known as “greenwashing.” A commission study that examined increasingly popular green labels found that more than half made environmental claims that were “vague, misleading or unfounded” and 40% were “unsubstantiated.”
The proposed new rules, called the “Green Claims Directive,” aim to set a standard criteria for the more than 200 voluntary sustainability labels used across the EU, which are currently “subject to different levels of robustness, supervision and transparency,” according to the proposal.
“We want, first of all, consumers to get trustworthy information which is consistent and verifiable,” said European Commissioner for Environment Virginijus Sinkevičius, during the proposal’s presentation on Wednesday. “We want environmental labels that are more transparent and, of course, easier to understand.”
The announcement from the European Commission comes weeks after the publication of Deforestation Inc., a cross-border investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, that revealed similar problems with “green labels” stamped on forestry products. The investigation exposed how a lightly regulated sustainability industry overlooks forest destruction...
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