The do’s and don’ts of green claims – takeaways from ECOS Annual Conference 2023
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Context
With Justin Wilkes | Executive Director, ECOS
ECOS Executive Director, Justin Wilkes, gave a brief overview of the work ECOS has been doing on communicating environmental information: from contributing to ISO standards to EU legislation to the current focus on carbon neutrality claims.
‘Greenwashing is a trending word that entered our dictionaries in the mid-1980 and is here to stay, he said, ‘there is a global consensus that many environmental claims are now simply greenwashing and that it has become a widespread problem.’ Not all green claims are misleading, but those that distort the market and hamper essential change must be eliminated. Environmental claims are made for a reason – we need to ensure that the market has reliable information so that it can play its role in delivering the green transition. By eliminating misleading claims, we give the spotlight to the best environmental practices of companies that are making a real change. We must not greenwash our way further into the triple planetary crisis.
Panel Discussion 1 – Too good to be true? From climate neutral to nature positive, green claims need urgent action
Johan Maree, Biodiversity Credit Alliance • Samuel Sinclair, Biodiversify • Margaux Le Gallou, ECOS
This panel discussed the issue of claims based on offsetting or crediting systems, whereby a company communicates on actions taken outside of its core activity, rather than on its own environmental impact. While climate neutrality claims are quite common, the panel aimed to shed light on similar claims made on biodiversity. The discussion focused on how claims such as ‘nature positive’ differ from climate and plastic offsetting, the difference between offsetting and credit claims (one claiming compensation for damage, the other contribution to nature restoration projects), and how to create a framework for contribution claims that do not fall into the same traps as offsetting claims.
The key question: how to ensure the financing of nature-related projects without letting companies indulge in greenwashing?
Panel takeaways
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- There is a lot of confusion in the discussions on claims and greenwashing. We need harmonised terminology on what a ‘biodiversity credit’ should be, to what extent it differs from offsets, or even how ‘nature positive’ should be defined.
- The carbon offset market led to greenwashing and did not support the transition to a sustainable future. Biodiversity credit markets mustn’t replicate their mistakes and truly lead to financing nature restoration projects.
- The remaining debate: how companies should communicate the fact that they fund external projects. Clear guidelines are needed before biodiversity credit claims become widespread.
- We need a clear distinction between the impact caused by companies and their financial contribution to nature restoration projects.
Watch the discussion again:
Panel Discussion 2 – How green are you? Communicating environmental information in a credible way
Małgorzata Gołębiewska, European Commission • Kieren Mayers, Sony Interactive Entertainment • Laetitia Montero, United Nations Environment Programme • Fleur Severijns, Dutch Consumer Agency
The second panel focused on green claims more broadly, offering tangible recommendations on how to improve environmental communication towards consumers – ranging from ensuring that claims give complete information, using unequivocal terms, to communicating on past commitments before setting new targets.
Panel takeaways
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- Discussing reliable green claims and how to use them involves a wide range of stakeholders, including industry, public authorities, NGOs, and consumers.
- We need to create a framework whereby companies making a real difference get recognition. Misleading claims need to disappear.
- Legislation should be clear on what good claims are. Beyond legislation, tailored guidelines from authorities and training for companies are needed to build the required expertise.
- Primary data is paramount to the relevance of the claim.
- Claims need to be adapted to the audience.
- There is a ‘magic formula’ to mitigate the risks of proliferating misleading claims composed of three ingredients:
- Clarity on what cannot be claimed.
- Clarity on what can and should be claimed.
- Powerful investigation and enforcement mechanisms
Did you miss any detail? Watch the discussion again:
Can we leave greenwashing behind and make credible green claims the norm?
Yes. But first, we have to clean up the muddied landscape of green claims. What do we need to make this happen?
- Companies, governments, and organisations should be able to make green claims – but these must be clear, reliable and verifiable.
- All green claims should be based on a publicly available set of requirements to ensure clarity and be third-party verified.
- Legislators should be explicit on what market actors may or may not claim and clearly define rules and terms that companies must follow.
- Environmental claims based on offsetting are inherently misleading and should be banned by legislators. As a rule, companies should always be clear on their own impact. Communicating how they contribute to a cause by financially supporting a project is acceptable but should be reported separately from how they report on their sustainability performance.
- Standardisers should not validate the use of measurement or accounting methods that can result in misleading claims (e.g., arbitrarily attributing a sustainability characteristic or impact to a product when it does not reflect the reality).
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Claims of ‘net zero’ and ‘climate neutral’ are everywhere. But can we really believe them? #TooGoodToBeTrue
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— ECOS
(@ECOS_Standard) June 14, 2023