Govt comes up with guidelines on misleading environmental claims in advertisements

NEW DELHI, Jan 11
The Central Consumer Protection Authority on Thursday held the third meeting of its committee preparing guidelines for protection of consumers against greenwashing and misleading environmental claims in advertisements.
Consumer Affairs Secretary and Chief Commissioner of the Authority Rohit Kumar Singh chaired the meeting. The guidelines define the “Greenwashing” and “Environm-ental claims.” They will be applicable to all advertisements or service providers, product sellers, advertisers, or an advertising agency or endorser whose service is availed for the advertisement of such goods or services.
The guidelines provide that no person to whom these guidelines apply shall engage in greenwashing and vague terms such as ‘green’, ‘eco-friendly’, ‘eco-consciousness’, ‘good for the planet’, ‘cruelty-free’, and similar assertions, without various disclosures.
The draft guidelines provide that aspirational or futuristic environmental claims need to be made with various disclosures. They provide a Guidance Note for environmental claims with appropriate examples to provide help and guidance to industry. The Guidelines prescribe various disclosures that would be required to be made by the company making green claims. These include that all environmental claims shall be accurate and disclose all material information either in the relevant advertisement or communication or by inserting a QR Code, or any such technology including web link, which will be linked to relevant information. While making disclosures in relation to environmental claims, data from research shall not be “cherry-picked” to highlight only favourable observations while obscuring others that are unfavourable.
Any person making an environment related claim should specify whether it refers to the good, manufacturing process, packaging, manner of use of the good or its disposal; or service or the process of rendering the service. All environmental claims shall be backed by verifiable evidence. Comparative environmental claims that compare one product or service to another must be based on verifiable and relevant data that is disclosed to the consumers.
Specific environmental claims must be supported by credible certification, reliable scientific evidence, and independent third-party verification to maintain their authenticity.
It has been clarified that penalty for misleading advertisement for Greenwashing by company will be governed as per Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and the Guidelines are just in the nature of clarification to the stakeholders and violations of the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act 2019 shall continue to be governed under the existing provisions of the Act.