Environmental claims
The EU Green Claims Directive has been put on hold for now, but this does not diminish the importance of honest and transparent sustainability communication. It is increasingly important for companies – including SMEs – to communicate their sustainability clearly and truthfully, as sustainability communication:
- tells about the company’s values
- build trust in customers
- helps you stand out from your competitors
- strengthens the company’s brand.
Environmental claims (“green claims”) can be any statements about a company’s products or operations regarding their environmental impact. Environmental and green claims are completely permissible and neutral in themselves. Companies should make them. They only become problematic when they are exaggerated, incomplete or otherwise misleading. It is the greenwashing that is being tried to control; greenwashing means situations where a company presents itself as more sustainable than it actually is. Here are two examples of greenwashing:
- A product claimed to be biodegradable but requiring an industrial-scale composting facility to break down, or whose decomposition takes so long that it does not occur in practice and the product ends up actually polluting soil and waterways.
- A company that advertises a single sustainability action as carbon neutral, but carbon neutrality has been achieved by offsetting emissions, not by actually reducing them.
Greenwashing can lead to reputational damage and loss of trust. That is why it is important that sustainability communications are based on facts and are always transparent.
How can we help you?
- We can assess your company’s environmental claims and their verifiability.
- We help identify potential risks in communication.
- We can help produce fact-based sustainability communications.
- We can help you prepare or finalize your sustainability report.
- We offer also hourly-based services to finalize or write the content of your website, as well as finalize or write blog texts or your company’s sustainability report from scratch.
