‘A sea of misinformation’: FTC to address industry greenwashing complaints
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking aim at greenwashing by big business with an update to its “Green Guides”, which would give the agency stronger legal cases against polluters by clarifying when companies’ deceptive marketing around sustainability and environmental responsibility violates federal law.
The move follows years of formal complaints filed with the FTC about often highly questionable claims made by fossil fuel companies, big agriculture, major food producers and other polluting industries.
Environmental groups, clean energy businesses and others have long raised concerns about claims made around carbon neutrality, carbon offsets, “natural” gas, “renewable natural gas”, plastic’s recyclability, organic labeling and vague terms that imply environmental responsibility but have no definition.
These issues show industry is waging an “organized disinformation campaign”, said John Kostyack, an adviser for the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign.
“Consumers have been badly misled about the impact of their purchasing on the environment,” he added.
The Green Guides were first issued about 30 years ago and are designed to provide industry with guidance on how it can make environmental marketing claims that comply with the FTC Act. The guides are non-binding, but they serve to strengthen the FTC’s cases when it takes legal action against industry, and the guides are often referenced by courts.
The last update occurred in 2012, and since then the level of fictitious or misleading marketing has proliferated, observers say. That’s probably because consumers are more interested than ever in supporting environmentally responsible companies, and industry is capitalizing on that desire, a practice which critics
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