Legislation

Sustainable Development

Green claims 

An international study

Consumer organisations can play a major role in initiating changes in consumption, by providing consumers with information and practical advice that allows them to change to more sustainable consumption patterns. ‘Sustainable consumption’, defined as reducing wasteful consumption and promoting more environmentally sound products, has been increasingly seen as a vitally important strategy in the effort to build a more sustainable world economy in the seven years since the adoption of Agenda 211.Consumers International, in partnership with 11 of its member country organisations, from 10 developed countries, started a project in 1996 whose overall aim was ‘to promote sustainable consumption by improving the ability of consumer organisations to provide environmental information to consumers’.

The results of the first phase of the project were published in Green guidance2 in July 1998.  Part of the Green guidance report brought together existing research about environmental or ‘green’ claims, and discussed consumer understanding of them, and their regulation, in the 10 countries. An environmental claim is a marketing claim about the environmental benefits of a product. Examples can be found on products, their labels and their packaging, as well as in product literature, advertisements and displays and may appear in the form of symbols, logos, words, pictures or slogans. The provision of accurate, unbiased, understandable, clear information is a key consumer issue. Access to information is essential if consumers are to exercise choice in a free market; lack of information obviously reduces their ability to exercise choice, but misleading or confusing information undermines it, too.

The existence of poorly regulated environmental claims undermines the development of markets for products that do less harm to the environment, because it reduces consumers’ ability to exercise informed choice about the environmental impacts when selecting products or services.

Consumers derive much of their knowledge about products from the marketing activities of producers. If consumers are to be increasingly encouraged to be more environmentally aware in their choice of products, they must be able to rely on the information on those products as well as the information that is used to promote them.

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