Life Cycle Thinking Blog - Environmental Marketing Claims

FTC cites 6 companies for bad degradability claims.

New Target program to push suppliers to provide more sustainable products.

Walmart issues new product disclosure and ban rules.

Purchasing requirements for ecolabels may be counterproductive.

New life cycle standard for environmental claims from the EU

FTC ordered companies to stop making zero VOC claims for their paints because the VOCs released upon use were not “trace” amounts

Reminder that FTC has issued new guides for environmental marketing claims: http://www.ftc.gov/os/2012/10/greenguides.pdf

There are more examples and terms explained, but it still comes down to two basic principles:

1. Be technically accurate

2. Do not mislead

Interesting article on LEED certification: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/24/green-building-leed-certification/1650517/

It’s not so easy to come up with a green standard – lots of competing goals and caveats to encourage enough buy-in to get organizations to use the standard. Unfortunately, many government organizations make assumptions about LEED without looking at the shortcomings because it’s simple to glom onto. Like every other system out there, lots of people will game it. How do you set up enough post-certification validation checks without dragging the whole system down? LEED has caused movement in the right direction overall, but maybe not much.

Finally, FTC has issued it’s updated guidelines for what appropriate environmental marketing claims can be made for products. A very nice summary is here. Guidance.

In concert with comments I submitted against general environmental claims, FTC says:

Marketers should not make broad, unqualified general environmental benefit claims like ‘green’ or ‘eco-friendly.’ Broad claims are difficult to substantiate, if not impossible.

The new NSF/ANSI 355 – 2011 standard on Greener Chemicals and Processes Information has been released after a lot of work by a passionate joint committee (including yours truly) from industry, ACS Green Chemistry Institute (the sponsor), EPA, academia, NGOs and NSF.