Cleaning supplies – Photo by Ellie Burgin on Pexels
(STRASBOURG) – The European Parliament gave its final green light Wednesday to an EU directive which aims to improve product labelling for consumers and bans the use of misleading environmental claims.
The directive seeks to help consumers make better purchasing choices by adding a number of problematic marketing habits related to greenwashing and the early obsolescence of goods to an EU list of banned commercial practices.
The new rules will to make product labelling clearer and more trustworthy by banning the use of general environmental claims like “environmentally friendly”, “natural”, “biodegradable”, “climate neutral” or “eco” without proof.
The use of sustainability labels will also now be regulated, given the confusion caused by their proliferation and failure to use comparative data. In the future, only sustainability labels based on official certification schemes or established by public authorities will be allowed in the EU.
In addition, the directive will ban claims that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment because of emissions offsetting schemes.
An important objective of the new law is to make producers and consumers focus more on the durability of goods. In future, any guarantee information has to be more visible, and a new, harmonised label will be created to give more prominence to goods with an extended guarantee period.
The new rules will also 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.
The new directive is meant to work together with the green claims directive, currently being discussed at committee stage in Parliament. The upcoming green claims directive will be more specific and elaborate the conditions for using environmental claims in greater detail.
Further information, European Parliament
