Canada latest to join green ad crackdown

The Canadian government has taken a strong stand against greenwashing, officially condemning marketing terms such as "green" and "eco" that appear without proper product lifecycle analysis.

Such terms "should be reserved for products/services whose lifecycles have been thoroughly examined and verified," according to an updated set of environmental labeling guidelines, released by the Competition Bureau, a government agency, in conjunction with the Canadian Standards Association last week.

The Bureau said the guidelines are designed to help businesses interpret the ISO 14021 standard on self-descriptive environmental labelling.

Businesses have a year to transition their labelling and advertising strategies to follow the guidelines. Companies that contravene them may incur investigation by the Bureau, which reserves the right to take immediate action before the 12-month deadline in particularly blatant cases of greenwashing.

"It goes beyond the labelling of a product and deals with advertising too," said Brendan Ross, major case director for misleading advertising and labelling at the Bureau. "We want to ensure that the information going to consumers is accurate and not false."

This is the first time that the government has updated its position on environmental labelling since Industry and Science Canada published its 1993 document Principles and Guidelines for Environmental Labeling and Advertising (PEGLA). The non-profit, member-funded CSA had published a set of guidelines for interpreting ISO 14021 in 2000, but the government was not involved. The public also had to pay for the original document, says Ross.

Advertising Standards Canada, a self-policing industry body which publishes an advertising code, insisted that it has not seen many complaints of greenwashing. "I am not aware of it being a big issue at this time, but efforts are more preventative," said vice president of standards Janet Feasby, although she added that complaints could rise in the future.

In contrast, Ross alleges that complaints received by the Bureau about exaggerated green claims are already growing.

The move by the Canadian government is the latest in a series of measures globally designed to ensure firms do not overstate their green credentials in the rush to attract environmentally conscious customers.

The UK advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Association has said in recent months that it will be paying particularly close attention to green claims, while the US Federal Trade Commission is undertaking a review of its guidelines governing environmental advertising.

Meanwhile, Australian regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last week handed out one of the most punitive rulings against a company's green claims yet, forcing tyre manufacturer Goodyear to offer partial refunds to customers over unsubstantiated claims that its Eagle LS2000 tyre range had "little environmental impact" and resulted in lower CO2 emissions.