Sustainable advertising: clear, fair and verifiable

The term Greenwashing was coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 to denounce the practices of some hotels that incited guests to reuse towels while wasted resources in other places. The term was expanding and today encompasses any marketing strategy that seeks to take advantage of environmental awareness without having a real commitment.

In addition to wreaking havoc in the credibility and trust of citizens, it is an increasingly persecuted practice. The European Directive 2024/825, in force since last March, is responsible for defining what is understood as deceptive advertising: insubstantial ads; tags or dubious terminology; set or attract attention in a single part of the activities justifying with what is sustainable; campaigns that exaggerate environmental efforts and use a confusing image full of trees.

However, the interesting thing is that in addition to saying what Greenwashing is, they indicate the direction towards which sustainable advertising has to go. «Information must be fair, clear and not misleading, that is, they do not give consumers the false impression that the consumption of a product has no environmental impact, avoiding terms such as climatic neutral, positive in terms of carbon, zero emissions or reduced CO2 footprint ».

It also requires that the claims are based on concrete plans, measurable and verifiable objectives by independent third parties. “Transparency implies not only telling what you want, but also what not and avoid showing beneficial, but irrelevant environmental actions in the context of global activity,” says the text.

In Spain, in addition, Belén López clarifies, is «the draft Law of Sustainable Consumption, which aims to end generic and vague concepts such as Bio, Eco, Sustainable, Green or Ecological, and guarantee the right of repair. It is interesting because the objective is to increase transparency in sustainability, risk management and the dissemination of non -financial information more and more tangible … in this way, we can better evaluate the strategies of the companies from the information from the information concrete they report ». For the teacher, the trend of sustainability, “will continue to evolve towards a circular economy in all sectors because resources are limited and must be better managed. There are good examples with firms that promote recycling, second -hand sale, etc. Many companies with a long journey in the market are making great efforts to be innovative, taking into account expectations ».