Greenwashing is the act of making false or misleading claims about the environmental benefits of a product. The term gets thrown around to cover all manners of corporate environmental evil, and whether you’re a small brand or large retailer, you might unconsciously be greenwashing. Catchy marketing and lofty never-quite-met goals for rapid growth are the usual culprits.
Transparency and trust are paramount to your customers. Greenwashing is getting easier and easier to spot, and it is not only a customer churn issue, it can quickly escalate to being a legal issue, too. The EU adopted a new anti-greenwashing law in January of this year, this past June the government of Canada tightened their Competition Act laws banning greenwashing and the USA relies on the FTC’s Green Guides to hold marketers accountable.
Novi Connect was founded with the mission of leveraging data and technology to foster transparency and develop better products for human health and the planet. Today Novi works with brands and retailers to verify and substantiate sustainability claims to ensure trust and loyalty.
Let’s go through examples of greenwashing and why and how to avoid it to ensure your clean work is, well, clean.
Many companies mislabel their accomplishments in their branding with wording like eco-friendly, green and natural to advertise their products. Without clear terminology and substantiation, these terms are not only hollow but also dangerous. Not all consumers have the time to thoroughly research ingredients and understand their health and environmental impacts. Consumers should be able to shop freely without the burden of safety. The responsibility should be upstream, on the sellers and manufacturers.
Another common tactic is hiding behind environmental trade offs, and making them grander, and in turn, vague and meaningless. You might be calling yourself “eco-friendly” because you put in the work to create a refill program with your new packaging. That in itself is important work, focus on that. Share just that. You don’t need to stretch the truth beyond verifying your specific packaging accomplishments. Your efforts matter. What is additionally important here is having a reputable seal or point of proof for your customers, so they understand that your new packaging has been vetted to meet a specific standard, like Ulta Beauty’s Sustainable Packaging badge for their Conscious Beauty program (vetted by Novi Connect).
Greenwashing has been a constant in the news for the past few years, and for good reason. In beauty, supplements, food, big retail, and fashion there are dozens of examples of brands learning revenue-losing lessons from false advertising of environmental claims. Keurig was called out for touting recyclability when it’s still more wasteful than traditional coffee machines, H&M was blasted for insincere fashion sustainability claims, and Ryanair was questioned for its low-emissions advertising.
A recent high profile example in the beauty industry was Kim Kardashian’s SKKN. Her doting following was not impressed with her excessive packaging and not-so-environmentally-friendly refill programs. The brand has since stopped advertising being sustainability-forward on their website.
Of the dozens of high profile examples of greenwashing, not all had lawsuits. But when it comes to your bottom line, reputation damage hurts just as much as litigious action. Word of mouth reigns supreme.
Greenwashing does not lead to anything good. Whether on purpose or not, your customers are discerning and are hungry for clear, honest marketing language. If they feel misled, you violate their trust, and thus bleed revenue. Repeat customers are your community and a brand or retailer’s holy grail. Lack of specificity in language will erode the fabric of these relationships.
Making sure you’re not practicing greenwashing is important, but so is being adamantly anti-greenwashing. If other brands and retailers in your business community distort the market with vague language and environmental exaggeration, this hurts the entire market of sustainable products. When it comes to protecting customers' health and safety and leaving behind a better planet, there is no such thing as competition.
Let’s start with The EU. EU polling found that 86% of consumers want better information on products. In direct response to this overwhelming sentiment, the EU is banning environmental claims on products that cannot be substantiated. To achieve this, the EU is banning:
Similar policy work is being done in the north. The Competition Bureau of Canada has amended previously enforced laws on greenwashing, and now states:
To attract environmentally-conscious consumers, you may want to feature ads, slogans, logos and packaging highlighting environmental attributes or benefits of your product or service. However, if you portray your products and services as having more environmental benefits than they truly have, you may be greenwashing, which could be illegal. Businesses should avoid vague claims such as “eco-friendly” or “safe for the environment”, which can lead to multiple interpretations, misunderstanding and deception.
As the new laws come into effect, the Canadian government recommends that you follow these simple best practices:
The bureau even created easy-to-access consumer complaint forms to help whistleblow on non-compliant organizations. The Canadian government’s push for environmental transparency is a big step forward, and is certainly a sign of what is to come globally. Whether or not you sell in the EU or Canada currently, we should all take these national policy changes as a sign of what’s to come.
If you’re looking for greenwashing policy examples closer to home, see the Federal Trade Comissions’ Green Guides. The guides were first published in 1992 and have since been updated four times, including its most recent in 2012. Given it’s been over a decade, and other countries are paving the way, further updates are likely incoming. Nevertheless, the most recent Green Guides do, at their core, legislate similar goals:
The Guides caution marketers not to make broad, unqualified claims that a product is “environmentally friendly” or “eco-friendly” because the FTC’s consumer perception study confirms that such claims are likely to suggest that the product has specific and far-reaching environmental benefits. Very few products, if any, have all the attributes consumers seem to perceive from such claims, making these claims nearly impossible to substantiate.
The Guides also:
These international changes mean that consumers are becoming more and more aware of greenwashing and harmful chemicals they should be avoiding. Vague language is on every consumer’s radar to avoid along with a few other hot topics in personal care: microplastics, sustainable packaging and environmentally transparent retailer programs to name a few.
Microplastics aren’t just the microbeads of early aughts face washes, they are so much more insidious. “Various examples of damage caused by microplastics have been reported, such as microplastic accumulation in the bodies of marine and aquatic organisms (leading to malnutrition), inflammation, reduced fertility, and mortality. In addition, as microplastics exist in micro-level to nano-level sizes, they are virtually impossible to remove once released into the environment” concludes the National Library of Medicine.
It’s crucial to understand the overall impact of your product before making any environmental claims.
By addressing these questions, you ensure your sustainability claims are genuine and worthy of their labeling.
Packaging has been a greenwashing hotspot for many years. Compostable straws mean very little if they’re wrapped in non-recycled and non-recyclable plastic, the chasing arrows recycling symbol is not always reliable. Consumers trusted this logo for a long time believing it was fool-proof and the containers branded with it were recyclable, which sadly isn’t always the case. Beyond the triangle, “The codes indicate the plastic resin used, not its recyclability. In fact, of the seven symbols introduced, only PET #1 and HDPE #2 plastic bottles and jugs can be widely recycled. All other plastics are being sent to landfill or burned.” (Good Start Packaging).
As noted previously, when discussing the launch of the Kardashian skin care line SKKN, consumers proved loudly that they care more about the planetary repercussions of their products than if they have an aesthetically pleasing nighttime routine.
Retailers with strict clean and sustainability programs, when done properly, are the holy grail for customer trust and loyalty. To power these programs, retailers must partner with a trusted vetting engine and become extremely clear and transparent with the standards so brands can work towards compliance. Moreover, consumers need to understand what the seals actually mean. As of 2023, 66% of Millennials and 68% of Gen Z will pay more for sustainable products, and they’re clamoring for retailers to make it easy for them to find these items, while being straightforward about the rules.
Customer curiosity now goes beyond the obvious with international law changes. As consumers educate themselves on commonly banned ingredients, for example, they're going to be on the lookout. Some banned chemicals to watch out for include Formaldehyde releasers, PFAS and phthalates. PFAS are linked to increased cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, developmental effects in children, decreased immune response and changes in liver function, while phthalates are associated with endocrine disruption and fertility issues.
With consumers being widely aware of No-No lists and carefully reading ingredients and looking for transparent material make-ups, they will no longer be fooled by unsubstantiated claims pertaining to their products.
Responsibly sourced is vague, Non-toxic is not properly defined by a public body and though reef-friendly is trending among consumers, the oceanographic community is clear that “nothing is truly reef safe as scientists are continually expanding our understanding of sunscreen toxicity.” (Smithsonian Ocean).
Most industry-leading clean and conscious retailer programs are already addressing greenwashing with vetting partners like Novi Connect. Novi is technology designed to support brands as they navigate the complexities of designing sustainable products, thus avoiding inadvertent greenwashing. Novi supports brands so they are not making any false claims, and allows them to vet their formulations and products against standards, find alternatives to create and formulate while substantiating their sustainability claims.
As the Canadian government states in their new greenwashing efforts: If you’re unsure whether a claim will mislead or misrepresent, then don’t make the claim.
If you know that your organization could have done better in this area in the past, you’re not alone. Conduct a post mortem on previous areas of environmental exaggeration and set feedback driven goals with publicly-facing deadlines. An annual impact report is a common way to stay accountable.
Other specific ways are:
For retailers
For brands
Finally, of course, use Novi Connect to vet your products against 125+ regulatory and retailer requirements and understand the actions needed to substantiate and validate your claims:
