The Federal Trade Commission recently announced that it is updating and revising green marketing and packaging guidelines. The last changes were made in 1998 and as you can imagine, much has changed. Certainly many more businesses are promoting varying degrees of environmental responsibility as a part of their manufacturing, design and packaging.
The FTC guidelines’ primary objective is to avoid deceptive marketing and packaging practices and some of the issues they plan on addressing include:
-Marketing carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates
-Claims such as environmentally friendly, sustainable, recyclable, recycled content, degradability, compostability
-The use of environmental seals and certifications
You can check out the current and soon to be updated guidelines at the FTC site.
As you will notice, current guidelines really don’t address many commonly used packaging claims that we associate with environmentally responsible practices such as sustainable, renewable, or eco-friendly.
The new FTC guidelines will come none too soon for many environmental advocates and responsible marketers given the recent report from TerraChoice Environmental Marketing showing that most green marketing claims are incorrect and guilty of at least one of the ‘Six Sins of Greenwashing’.
While it’s great to see so many businesses embracing environmental sustainability, it’s also important to provide clarity for both manufacturers and consumers by establishing guidelines and definitions of terminology so we can all evaluate for ourselves if products and packaging meet our expectations.
See related coverage on the FTC & Green Marketing
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