DEFRA just published the guidance for green claims. This is a very clear and detailed document on how to make green claims when marketing products and services.

They’ve come up with 3 simple and structured steps of making a claim:
1. Check the content is relevant and reflects a genuine benefit
2. Present the claim clearly and accurately
3. Check the claim can be readily substantiated

For each of the 3 steps they offer a checklist including things such as:

• Does the claim convey additional benefits to what is already happening or is required?
• Is the claim a truthful and accurate representation of the scale of the environmental benefit or what is likely to happen in practice?
• Are the scope and boundaries of the claim clear?
• Is the evidence to substantiate a claim clear and robust, or is there uncertainty? Has it been tested using the most appropriate standard methods?

Then, the guide offers great case studies on bad and good practice. It’s shocking to see that the following bad practices actually occur:

• Having improved energy efficiency in the manufacture of a car by 5%, a company claimed the car was “environmentally friendly”.
• On the basis that it offered locally sourced food, a hotel claimed it was “good for the environment”. However, the greenhouse gas emissions from its operations as a whole were significantly greater than those of its competitors.
• A product sold widely in the UK claimed: “this product is recyclable” when most areas of the UK do not have the correct infrastructure to recycle it.
• A large car is claimed to be “greener than its competitors” on the basis that it has the lowest carbon emissions within its ‘large car’ category (but this is not stated on the claim).
• A claim of “now 50% more recycled content” may be misleading if previously it had 10% recycled content and had increased this to 15%.
• A logistics company measured and reduced emissions from its head office and claimed to be a “carbon neutral company”. However, it did not include emissions from its
• transport usage.
• A detergent bottle made from plastic materials was labelled as “plastics neutral”.
• A claim that a compostable bio-based plastic bag “reduces greenhouse emissions by 20% compared to a conventional plastic bag” was quantified using the assumption that everyone who uses the plastic bag will compost it.

Read more about this here

Download the pdf guide here

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