EU to tackle ‘green claims’ with unified product lifecycle methodology
Author: Anna Gumbau
The European Commission is preparing to table a proposal that will force companies to substantiate their environmental claims, using an EU-wide methodology that has been in the making for nearly ten years. The Commission will table its so-called ‘green claims’ regulation to make the environmental labels and credentials listed by companies – like their recyclability or biodegradability – reliable, comparable, and verifiable across the EU. That could be an instrument to tackle ‘greenwashing’, or companies making false claims about the environmental footprint of their products. In turn, this could help consumers to make better-informed choices about the products they buy. Companies will have to substantiate their claims using a single EU methodology called Product Environmental Footprint (PEF). This method measures “the environmental performance of a product or organisation throughout the value chain, from the extraction of raw materials to the end of life, using 16 environmental impact categories,” the Commission said in a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of the proposal.