On 17 January the plenary session of the European Parliament was held in Brussels in which it was approved that, from now on, the law will require evidence of 'green' claims with the aim of ending and prohibiting the 'ecopostureo' to protect consumers from misleading advertising and early obsolescence of products.
The bill was passed with more than 590 votes in favour and only 21 against and aims to prevent consumers from falling prey to misleading marketing practices. To meet this objective, the EU is proposing to add to a list of commercial practices banned by the EU a series of marketing habits related to 'ecopostureo', misleading 'green' claims and early obsolescence of products.
The law will prohibit generic environmental claims such as "environmentally friendly", "natural", "biodegradable", "climate neutral" or "eco", without evidence of recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim as well as sustainability labels that are not based on approved certification schemes or established by public authorities.
The EU requires environmental labelling to be robust, reliable, transparent and especially verified.
These claims have already caused controversy and repercussions within the cosmetics industry. Last December, the UK authorities put the spotlight on Unilever's environmental claims, accusing them of being exaggerated and misleading. The UK regulator said that environmental claims made by Unilever on certain personal care items could not be 100% proven to be true and accused them of 'eco-posturing'. The regulator, in this case the CMA, also pointed out that certain environmental claims may not be clear, as they do not specify whether they are talking about a particular part of the product, packaging, colours or images.