The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the government agency responsible for preventing anticompetitive and deceptive business practices, recently issued revised guidelines designed to help marketers ensure that the claims they make about the environmental attributes of their products are truthful and non-deceptive.
The revised "Green Guides," which can be read in full below, include updates to the existing Guides, as well as new sections on the use of carbon offsets, "green" certifications and seals, and renewable energy and renewable materials claims. According to the FTC, the revisions reflect a wide range of public input, including hundreds of consumer and industry comments on previously proposed revisions.
An updated section of the Guides cautions marketers not to make broad, unqualified claims that a product is "environmentally friendly" or "eco-friendly" because, according to the FTC's research, such claims are likely to suggest that the product has specific and far-reaching environmental benefits. On the contrary, the FTC said, very few products, if any, have all the attributes consumers seem to perceive from such claims, making these claims nearly impossible to substantiate.Other updates to the Guides include sections that:
- Advise marketers not to make an unqualified degradable claim for a solid waste product unless they can prove that the entire product or package will completely break down and return to nature within one year after customary disposal.
- Caution that items destined for landfills, incinerators, or recycling facilities will not degrade within a year, so marketers should not make unqualified degradable claims for these items.
- Clarify guidance on compostable, ozone, recyclable, recycled content, and source reduction claims.
- New sections of the Guides outline the FTC's positions on: 1) certifications and seals of approval; 2) carbon offsets, 3) free-of claims, 4) non-toxic claims, 5) made with renewable energy claims, and 6) made with renewable materials claims.
Noticeably absent from the Green Guides is guidance on the use of the terms "sustainable," "natural," and "organic." FTC said it did this because it either lacks a sufficient basis to provide meaningful guidance or wants to avoid proposing guidance that duplicates or contradicts rules or guidance of other agencies, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which monitors claims about products using "organic" ingredients.
According to the FTC's website, the agency first issued its Green Guides in 1992 to help marketers avoid making misleading environmental claims. It revised the Guides in 1996 and 1998, and proposed further revisions in October 2010 to take into account recent changes in the marketplace. The guidance they provide includes: general principles that apply to all environmental marketing claims; how consumers are likely to interpret particular claims, and how marketers can substantiate these claims; and how marketers can qualify their claims to avoid deceiving consumers.
The Green Guides are not agency rules or regulations. Instead, they describe the types of environmental claims the FTC may or may not find deceptive under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Under Section 5, the agency can take enforcement action against deceptive claims, which ultimately can lead to Commission orders prohibiting deceptive advertising and marketing and fines if those orders are later violated. In recent years, the FTC has taken action to deceptive recyclability, biodegradable, bamboo, and environmental certification claims.
For more information on complying with the Green Guides, see this article from Hardwood Floors' August/September 2012 issue.
