"Adverts with unregulated climate claims are barrier to real emission cuts – NGO lawyer", 26 Sep 2022

...Can court judgements in greenwashing cases have ramifications beyond national jurisdictions?

[Jonathan White]: Positive rulings... could spread far beyond the final decision, sending a clear message across industry that other rogue companies will face judges and regulators unless they stop misrepresenting their climate impact and plans to address it.

Also possible is a positive legal precedent which opens the door to other lawsuits on similar arguments and in other jurisdictions...

Are you optimistic about the use of consumer law as a way of tackling companies on their climate claims – as opposed to the duty of care and human rights arguments that we've seen in other cases recently?

...When it comes to balancing consumer law with other legal avenues for holding companies to account, both and all angles are very much needed...

One thing I would highlight is that consumer law – compared to duty of care and human rights...– has a very developed enforcement architecture: There are lots of actors and elements that aim to enforce it...

What elements of the proposed update to the EU unfair consumer practices directive are likely to be most useful to campaigners taking companies to court over false climate claims?

The commission has proposed a real raft of anti-greenwashing amendments that will make their way into EU law and then into member states’ law...

The first point is that the reforms put environmental and social impact... explicitly on the list of main product characteristics, which, if false, could constitute a misleading commercial practice and in breach of the law...

The second relates to vague claims. To help enforce the basic rule that environmental claims must match the environmental evidence, the reforms clarify that ‘generic environmental claims’, such as ‘environmentally friendly’ or ‘green’ or ‘biodegradable’, will be considered in breach of the law, unless they are about a product in the EU Ecolabel scheme...

The final point is on future goals. This specifically singles out marketing claims about future environmental performance, like “net zero by 2050” or “100% recycled plastic by 2030.”... Now companies marketing these goals will have to back them up with clear, objective and verifiable targets and commitments...