Substantiate your environmental claims

Most environmental claims are likely to be objective or factual claims that can be tested against scientific or other evidence. Given the requirement that claims must be truthful and accurate, your business should have evidence to support them.

Some advertising claims can be purely subjective or hyperbole. In those cases, consumers may recognise them as such or treat them as advertising ‘puff’ that they do not take literally. Consumers are unlikely to expect those claims to be based on particular evidence.

Claims which businesses commonly make about environmental impacts are likely to be different. They are likely to relate to matters that can be assessed against the scientific or other evidence.

You should therefore hold robust, credible, relevant and up-to-date evidence that supports your environmental claims. Where you compare your products or activities to one or more competitor’s, that evidence should cover all of them.

When investigating potentially misleading claims, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) or other enforcers can seek evidence from your business to support your claim(s). If enforcement action ends up before the courts, the courts can require your business to provide evidence of the accuracy of claims. If your business does not provide it, or it is inadequate, the court may consider the claim inaccurate.

Environmental claims which are made with no regard to whether your business actually knows there is evidence to support them are also likely to be problematic, even if they turn out to be true. The nature of most environmental claims means consumers are likely to expect them to be based on supporting evidence. Where they are not, you are likely to have fallen below the standards of diligence and care consumers are entitled to expect of them.

Checklist for substantiating your environmental claims

Before making a claim, you should ask yourself:

• Is the claim you are making subjective or objective?
• Do you have appropriate evidence to support your claim?
• Is the evidence based on accepted science or understanding or is it contested or unproven?
• Has the evidence been subject to independent scrutiny?
• Is the evidence up to date?
• Does the evidence reflect ‘real world’ conditions?
• Is evidence available to or from others in your supply chain?
• Is the evidence publicly available and can consumers verify the claims?

The Green Claims Code helps businesses meet consumer protection laws when making environmental claims.