A Deep Dive into the Green Claims Code

In this enlightening episode of our video podcast, we tackle the increasingly relevant and complex topic of greenwashing. As more consumers become environmentally conscious, businesses are under pressure to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability. However, this surge in 'green' marketing has led to a concerning trend of misleading environmental claims, often referred to as greenwashing.

Our episode begins with an introduction to the concept of greenwashing and its impact on both consumers and the environment. We explore how businesses, intentionally or not, may make exaggerated or false claims about the eco-friendliness of their products or services, misleading well-intentioned consumers.

The core of our discussion centers around the Green Claims Code developed by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). This code is a groundbreaking initiative designed to guide businesses in making honest, accurate, and substantiated environmental claims. We break down each of the 6 key points of the code, discussing their importance and how they can be applied in real-world scenarios.

Throughout the episode, we feature interviews with experts in environmental policy, marketing ethics, and consumer rights. These insights provide a multi-dimensional perspective on the importance of truthful environmental claims and the consequences of greenwashing.

We also present case studies of companies that have been reprimanded for greenwashing, along with examples of businesses that are getting it right, offering a balanced view of the current landscape.

The episode concludes with practical tips for both businesses and consumers. For businesses, we discuss how to align marketing strategies with the Green Claims Code, ensuring that environmental claims are transparent, accurate, and substantiated. For consumers, we provide guidance on how to spot greenwashing and make informed decisions when purchasing 'green' products.

This podcast is an essential listen for anyone interested in the intersection of environmental sustainability, consumer rights, and ethical marketing. Join us as we delve into the world of green claims and uncover the truth behind green marketing.


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Transcript

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Welcome to the Going Green podcast. Today we're going to have a look at two little things. One is the grim carbon dioxide forecast for 2024, but also we're going to have a look at companies and making their green claims. It's not good news. No it's not. No, carbon dioxide forecast for 2024 is going up. If you look at the chart for the last few years, the amount of carbon dioxide produced in the air is actually going up. What we mean by going up, they do cycle there as over the year there is a peak and there is a minimum. Basically they plot the average. The average is going up. What they are looking at is seeing that the average, not going up, but the average is going up. But of course they can track how high the average is going up. So we're looking at in the 1960s or 1950s. I can't remember what year they started their prediction. 1958. The grim news is that in 1958 we were rising at about one part per million per year. And then we've got it going up by 1.5. And then in the next few years it's at 2. And currently we're at increase of 2.5 a year. And that's since we've started all these COPs and saying, right, we're going to put in some targets, we're going to lower CO2 emissions, and it's still increasing. And it's not that we're just continuing going up. We're still accelerating going up. And this is the really grim news to think that countries are now trying to cut down their CO2 emissions, and yet it's still on the rise. It's still increasing. And this is, well, disaster in the making, isn't it? Well, yes. The answer to this is the actual chart, the map of CO2 in the atmosphere. And it's done at Mauna Loa. There we go. In Hawaii. Very exotic, very exciting place. And they do all their data from there. And the idea of looking at this is given the illustration of what the concentration of CO2 is in the atmosphere. So that you can basically say, well, we know how much is increasing year upon year. We know the average. We can see it's going up. And therefore, we can then see how well we're doing climate goalwise against reducing CO2 emissions or even reducing the amount going up by. Yeah. So CO2 emissions is basically the more CO2 we have in the air, the more global warming. And this is something I've been teaching all my students. We've been having a lot of fun imagining your head is a carbon atom in your oxygen atoms in your hands. And I asked them to do a little bit of exercise. They start moving their arms around. And that's what happens with carbon dioxide. It absorbs this infrared radiation given off by the earth, heat. And they start vibrating around rather than letting this infrared go. They start absorbing it. And they keep the heat in. And obviously, that's the problem in regards to why CO2 is so bad, is because basically, it takes the infrared in and then, of course, reradiates it out as infrared. They don't radiate it out. That would be a shame. It would be very cool. It would be like sort of the northern lights or the southern lights, but no. Unfortunately, it's not. And so that's the pathway for all the heating is that's the concentration of CO2 directly linked. And so to keep the heat down or to lower the climate temperature, it is seen that the amount of CO2 we have put out needs to be decreased, which is why we talk about all the carbon capture, carbon neutral, or even carbon negative, is to remove the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so that any warming effect that the CO2 produces is minimal or minimized so that the climate could obviously then either cool down or we can set a nice constant temperature because of course, we don't want to freeze. We just want to not get any hotter. So that's the reason why these measurements are done and seen is because it's a direct link between them. And the ongoing CO2 rise is mainly driven by fossil fuels. It's fossil fuel burning. We're also changing the use of land. We're cutting down those rainforests and we're replacing that with either agriculture or worse places for people to live because they're really sort of very negative. There are a few things that are making life worse at the moment. The El Nino is sort of lowering some of the sort of tropical carbon sinks, places that sort of attract more carbon. They're not at the moment. So that's sort of making things a little bit worse. However, the global trend is we're still going up in CO2, whereas we should be. We should be coming down and aiming for net zero. That doesn't mean to say we can't still do it, but unfortunately, we're not probably going to do it with the 1.5 degree rise. It might be a 2 degree rise. And how does that affect people? Well, that's more water being taken out of the poles or the ice and turned into water. We're looking at more fires. We're looking at more floods. We're looking at not such a nice place to live in. Even if you have got somewhere to live, you're not flooded. Yeah, exactly. So as you can see, it's not a good scenario, all these things, which is why, of course, that's why we talk about that's why these things are talked about in relation to carbon, those sorts of things. Now, alongside that we just mentioned earlier is, of course, what you can do as a company to basically do all these lovely things, what is known as carbon offsets. They're not directly true in relation to trying to reduce the amount of carbon you're exporting or releasing. It's the idea sort of, if I pay for someone else to collect some, then that offsets my carbon CO2 I've produced. So that's how the scheme works. But one of the many things of these schemes is these schemes, all loads of them have quite a lot of claims and lots of companies buy into these claims saying they are now managing to offset their carbon, however tons they want to admit to saying, except, of course, they're found out to be not actually offsetting their claims. Well, they're lying. It's one of those things where where are they lying at what point? They're paying the money for the offset, right? But they're not actually getting the offset. Who is it? Who is it? Is it the person who's trying to do the offset or is the company for buying into the offset? And so there's this huge problem of not chicken and the egg, but sort of who is breaking the law has indicated that we need to get some rules out the gate. And in, I think it was 2008, well, a report was written in 2019 of a survey that was done in 2018. So we'll go glance all over that of done by not a large group, but a sort of a EU, I was in Europe now, because of course, well, we were inside the other time. You're inside Europe at that time. So pre-Brexit, so a European study found that all greenwashing claims is these are the claims that essentially, we are doing more environmentally things as well as the green carbon options, which is that's where we're relation were found to be not necessarily false, but not correct. And I'm going to say that word in regards to as in, yes, they did pay for 40 tons of C2 to be absorbed or captured, but they didn't actually capture 40 tons of C2. Just just glancing over that. So anyway, so that's what they found 40% of all not claims on the internet, that's the wrong way to put, but all government or corporate claims of carbon capture were false. So the idea that now, not necessarily false, just not true. Yeah, subtle difference. And the idea is that, of course, consumers like you, I, we are being misled or greenwashed is the technical term by this in saying that companies or products or things are greener or cleaner than they are. And so the idea is to change that to provide more transparency to sort of give better guidance consumers to say, finally, are you actually meeting those 40 something capturing? Are you planning to capture 40 tons? That's fine. But have you actually captured that 40 tons? Oh, that's the devil in the detail part. So anyway, so that's what comes. So the UK and the EU separately, because of course, we now post Brexit have come up with two, not different ways, but some very similar ways to talk about these green claims as in to sort of get rid of the greenwashing and provide actual green claims facts or statistics, you know, to make everything greener, cleaner. Yeah, the green claims greener or cleaner. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the UK was a little bit quicker than the EU in getting going on this. So we've had this for a while now. And we have something called the green claims code. And basically, here, this is sort of the competition markets authority, the CMA has developed this green claims code, which sets out six points, which makes you check that your environmental claims are genuine, and they're genuinely green. So we've got those. Now, the European Union is sort of a little bit behind us, and they've just got there now. And of course, they don't they want to have a green claims code, they're going to have European directives, aren't they? They're going to have the green, green code directives or the and the European one is a little bit more different because it's a bit more federal style as opposed to the UK, which is sort of the correct level. So the EU directive, this green code directive is essentially say that all EU countries must come up with their own say, green claims code that the UK has done. So it's one of those. As I said, we've done it first, but the directive isn't actually on creating the code, it's the industry that EU countries actually do create their own code. And that basically everybody must follow it, which is fine. And so I go through the claim to go through some of the ideas and the sectors are all very similar. But the EU one, it has to be verified by, of course, a third party. And I have a name for those, don't I, Paul? I call them quangos. Yeah, a little sort of committee set up by a sort of the government and its jobs for the boys. And every country in the EU will have their own different one, don't they? Yes. And so the idea, essentially, let's say you sell a car or a tomato or whatever you want to sell. And let's say you want to sit in Poland, you must fit your green claims about that product. A car, tomato must fit the Polish green code terms. Whatever, right? Now, if you wanted to sell your tomato car, whatever in France, as in your Poland, you now must apply both Polish and French green code claims, rules, regulations, ideas in relation to all those things. And they might be different. So we're not going. And of course, eventually, the idea, if you want to sell something EU wide, you have to follow all 23, 27, sorry, EU member states green code rules. So the idea, it's very simple. The idea is basically is if, of course, a company fails this code, then, of course, then they can be litigated against, you know, slap on the wrist or fined for breaking the rules saying you claim to do 20 or you claim to do 40, but you only manage to 20. We got to find you for not doing that extra 20. And in theory, the idea is that if you actually do follow the rules, then you can use it as proof to stop being litigated against as in get stop being fined. That's the idea. And of course, the fines are up to the member states. As I said, it's a directive for the EU member states to actually implement and they can do whatever they haven't got to the implementation. They've only been told now officially by the EU Parliament that this directive is now in place. So they've got some time. We're talking 2026 sort of implementation. We're not sort of, you know, they must do it now. They've got some time, but of course, it's all coming through. And in the meantime, of course, the UK has done, as we said, created their own green claims regulation code code. Too many of these terms for you. Yes. And so it's one of those things where you might find all the countries might have been copying someone's homework, sort of looking over and sort of saying, oh, that's a good one. So we'll go on to what actually is going to happen for the EU. But we should go through what the UK one states because we've got them. Okay, so let's start with some of these then. Green claims must be a truthful and accurate. The businesses must live up to the claims that they make about their products, services, brands and activities. So we're going to be truthful. So today I can be very truthful and say that I've got lots of cameras switched on. I've got lights here and we've got sound equipment and I've got some computers on and well, we actually got quite a lot of computers on. We've got video conferencing going on and at the moment, all of the electricity that is there is being covered by our solar panels. And I can look at the meter and I can see that we are actually, even with all that, still exporting some electricity. Now, we can't directly actually say how much electricity we're importing. The meter won't tell us. But we can't say that. But it does say we're not importing, which is the fact. So as I said, we're being accurate and truthful. The meter doesn't say how much we're importing. So we could be covering it just about or we could be incorporating it. So quite a lot. We've been truthful following the law, we've been, you know, the code truthful. Now, it's also blooming cold here. Outside at the moment, it's minus 3.8 degrees Celsius. At least it was when we started the broadcast. And in here, it's a little bit warmer, not that much warmer, but it is it is warmer. Hence, we got the fleeces on. And we put on our heating. Now, we're actually based outside here. Our studio is actually not inside our house, but outside. And we're in actually in a marquee. And we've had to heat that. And I put my jet engine on. It's a propane heater. And we put that on for five, 10 minutes. And it's raised the temperature here. So it's it's OK to sit in here and actually to sort of do a broadcast. And I might actually later have to put it on again because I'm going to be teaching out here. My studio transforms into a classroom. And I'm going to be teaching out here. And I'll then have to put that on. So that is going to produce some carbon dioxide. So although we're not electricity is not producing CO2, of course, our heating is now that all brings us back into the claim number two or the rule number two, shall we say. And that is to be clear and unambiguous, as in the meaning that the consumer is likely to take from a product messaging and the credentials of that product should match. And so that's what we're saying here is openly we are heating this place using gas. And that's one of those things where unfortunately we have to do that. But we are making it clear that it is heated by gas. We make no or not no apologies for it because it's one of those things where if we could find a better solution, we would. And our house indoors is also heated by gas. And that's running at about it has been varying. But between five and 30 pence an hour. So we're quite pleased with that because our house is reasonably well insulated. And so that's working quite well. Mind you, the marquee we're out here is also very well insulated. And that tries to sort of keep our costs down because it's not just in my interest to do greenwashing and make these claims is all my also in my interest to stay reasonably warm. And so upon those sort of statements is that course that leads into number three, which is of course we should not admit or even hide important information that needs to be under underlighted and underlined and line under highlighted. So claims as in green claims must not prevent someone from making an informed choice because of the information they leave out. So what can we do about electricity? We're covering that. Except we don't during the nighttime because at nighttime the sun doesn't shine and we also don't usually put the cameras on. We still have the computers on. We put TV's on and lights on so we can see. So we're still going to be using and importing some electricity. Of course if we got a grotty day. We're also not going to export much electricity and we'll have to still import some. There's not much I can do about the heating. I can go over to a different form of heating which will use electricity. But actually that costs more for me. And of course we've also got to bring in the system soon. My gas boiler will reach its sort of end of well yeah efficiency end of life freely and we'll have to think about replacing that. And of course the rules are changing so that when we replace it we won't go to the load to be replacing it with another gas boiler. But we'll in fact then have to convert to heating the house by something like an air source heater. And that's going to be a little bit different. Yes. And probably more expensive. Well yeah well it always is. Anyway so now we need to turn into some rules that of course not not we can't directly use or do. But it's one of the things where we are if you follow the rules we are only allowed to make fair and meaningful comparisons. Yeah we don't do comparisons that much. So it's not I'll do that. But any product compared any products compared to meet the same needs or to be intended for the same purposes. Our problem our problem here is we don't actually have any products really. We have services and my services are I do some teaching and students come here for lessons. Now if I compare myself with somebody else who now perhaps drives to a student's house they're not using any electricity. They're not using any heating themselves because that's all being provided by the client. And comparing them with me well that's a little bit different you see. So can we claim the same as they can. And the answer is no because we have a classroom. We have a laboratory here and so our claim is to be different and we have to compare ourselves basically like we'd like. And we have yet to find that we've yet to find someone who actually does the same as we do. So yeah difficult to then compare when we're trying to do that. So products can be a bit more difficult. It depends who else is in your sort of market area. So we can just compare ourselves with sort of other similar type of places like a school and in fact compared with the school we are highly efficient compared with most schools. But then they are really completely different scenarios. So one of those things that not to consider but to remember all these rules and things these are not necessary formal rules but more like guidance and sort of. So we move on to rule number five or code number five whatever and it's to consider the full lifecycle of the products. We're making claims businesses must consider the total impact of the product or service claims can be misleading. They don't reflect the overall impact or where they focus on one aspect of it but not another. And that goes back into relation of what you were saying earlier in that we hear the students come here so we don't have to deal with the transporting or those sort of impacts. But of course if he wins out that that's all his fair game in sort of relation to that. So it's a bit sort of a struggle but you can sort of see the idea that of course if you slap on saying something's recyclable you need to actually make sure it's recyclable as opposed to saying yeah let's say you buy something that they say is recyclable then you know in theory it should be and whether or not it is isn't your fault. But of course you should only be looking at things that are recycled and they should be making sure that they claim if they're recyclable actually is recyclable because what we found some packaging that said it is recyclable and it was all like oh yes it has to be done in a oh it was those green bags now they say are compostable. And the answer is it's only compostable in an industrial composting setting as opposed to the compost it to do home composting. Yes it was something like that. And yes it was not it guess it was composting as in it was can go in the food waste bin but it wouldn't go into a consumer food compost heap it had to go to an industrial compost heap which of course that's that was the misleading claim. So yes but you know the people buying that product didn't know those claims and they only found out and then they were all bit of panic about it. So there you go. So yes we say clean claims here can be slightly misleading because sometimes you're just trying to compare like with like and it's difficult and it's trying to do the overall impact. So for instance do I claim here that because I don't go out using a car then that's better except people come to me and they will use their car. Now that of course isn't directly related to my company but it does cause a little bit of misleading information and so you have to be very clear what you are claiming. The last of these list things on the list is you've got to be substantiated and this is the difference I suppose really with sort of the EU and with the UK here businesses should be able to back up their claims with a robust credible and up to date evidence. Whereas the EU Paul. Yeah the answer is although it's the same idea that they should all be credible and robust and up to date the answer is businesses need to supply what is known as a verifier as in a third party independent. One go wherever who they then make you put their basically rubber stamp on to make sure that all the claims are truthful accurate as in up to their belief. So then if and if of course they lie to the independent third party then they can get in awful trouble because of course the independence they put their stamp on all good faith saying we believe it is and you've now ruined your thing. Here's a penalty and they are allowed to set up penalties separately whereas of course the UK we've taken a more it's up to the businesses to actually do that rather than directly have an independent party because of course the idea of the having independent one is sort of like you know you could have all these claims and this company could be paid off or whoever as the independent party. So the independence could be paid off and then there could be rubber stamps is just a yes pay me a million dollars and I'll rubber stamp it and it's a problem. Whereas of course if you just tell businesses of course make sure they're claimed they are still businesses are still liable under the claims to be proven they have to actually go through. So instead of having this rubber stamp which is to avoid the claims in the UK technically if you make a claim you're liable for the claim in theory hasn't been the EU hope to bring this out as full said in the next few years. I was in the UK has been going since as far as I know the 20th of September 2021 I looked up the date. Yes you've been listening to the going green podcast looking at green claims and the worrying points about that CO2 levels are still increasing and forecast are still increasing. We'll be back next time when we have a look at another topic on going green until then it's goodbye from me goodbye from me goodbye.