Today is Tuesday, January 23, 2024.
European Union (EU) adopts new law banning greenwashing and misleading product information.
"Companies can no longer trick people by saying that plastic bottles are good because the company planted trees somewhere – or say that something is sustainable without explaining how. This is a big win for all of us!” said the Parliament’s rapporteur Biljana Borzan in a Press Release last 17 January 2024.
And she complemented: "We will step away from throwaway culture, make marketing more transparent and fight premature obsolescence of goods."
The new rules:
make product labelling clearer and more trustworthy.
ban the use - without proof - of general environmental claims like “environmentally friendly”, “natural”, “biodegradable”, “climate neutral” or “eco”.
ban claims that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment because of emissions offsetting schemes.
ban "unfounded durability claims (for example saying that a washing machine will last for 5,000 washing cycles if this is not true under normal conditions), prompts to replace consumables earlier than strictly necessary (often the case with printer ink, for example), and presenting goods as repairable when they are not".
determines that guarantee information has to be more visible.
In the future, a new guarantee extension label will be introduced in the EU and only official certification schemes will authorize sustainability labels.
Always with the purpose of not leaving our readers behind relevant topics, on May 16, 2023 we posted about the initial stages of this same directive "Protecting consumers from greenwashing: new rules for sustainable, durable and repairable products"
Click at the image below for the 17 January 2024 Press Release.
You may also like to read again this post "New research by NielsenIQ & McKinsey: Consumers care and are in fact buying sustainable goods".
