The growing concern of consumers for the environment has led many companies to promote measures aimed at creating more sustainable products, also dedicating great efforts to communicate this trend, both in the food industry and in many others. In Europe, specifically, 94% of the population considers environmental protection important and 68% agree that their consumption habits negatively affect it and demand "reliable and verifiable" information in this regard, according to Eurobarometer data. .
With the aim of preventing companies with activities in the European Union "from making voluntary environmental declarations without foundation or sufficient evidence to support them", the European Commission has proposed a series of common criteria against what they call "ecological laundering", which occurs "when companies try to imply that their products or processes are more environmentally friendly than they really are." With this proposal, "consumers will enjoy greater clarity and a stronger guarantee that when something is sold as organic it really is, as well as better quality information to opt for environmentally friendly products and services" .
Some of the actions into which the proposal of the European Commission will translate, which still has to be submitted for approval by the European Parliament and the Council, is that companies are obliged to verify through scientific tests the ecological declarations that their products include or services. In addition, it is also proposed to regulate environmental labels, since there are currently at least 230 different ones and, according to the Commission, "there are indications that this generates confusion and mistrust among consumers."
From the environmental organization Friends of the Earth, the Commission's proposal has been received coldly, since "although it is very important to fight against the so-called green washing, that is, against all kinds of unsubstantiated environmental allegations, the truth is that this The proposal has been disappointing in some quite important points, since, first of all, it does not expressly prohibit certain allegations, which reduces its power and effectiveness”, explains Adriana Espinosa, head of Natural Resources and Waste of said organization. Espinosa also points out that another of the disappointing points of this proposal for the organization he represents is that although it is true that it urges certain statements to be scientifically verified, "at the moment of truth it does not establish a common methodology to do so."
For Friends of the Earth, then, the Commission's proposal, which largely affects the food industry, could remain a dead letter if, ultimately, "statements that should not be used in themselves" are not expressly prohibited and they are not They establish "universal scales that guarantee that it can be demonstrated that what the companies say is true". Espinosa points out that from Friends of the Earth "we are aware of the difficulties that this last measure entails at a technical level, but it is essential to put it into operation if we do not want consumers to be immersed in an amalgam of information that is not only misleading, but also in many directly false cases.
A good example of this is the use of the term biodegradable, which is commonly used as a claim. “Many companies have signed up for this term when institutions have begun to limit the use of conventional disposable plastic. Given that the image of plastic has suffered a setback as a result of regulations such as those of 2018 and 2019, companies use as a bio claim a concept that is a lie, that does not exist, since when you throw away a biodegradable bag it will not degrade carbon automatically, but it turns into microplastics and nanoplastics that are obviously polluting. These bags only biodegrade under very specific conditions, which are those that occur in industrial composting plants”, explains Espinosa. This means that both the bags and those containers that are advertised as biodegradable will only be so if we use them to recycle together with organic compounds, "which is very complicated, since in most places there is no specific network for these residues”.
One of the implications of using this type of concept is that it leads to confusion, so that consumers do not quite understand how they have to act on certain occasions. “The only thing we are achieving is perpetuating the use of bags, because many people believe that they are innocuous and that, therefore, they can use them at will, when the message should be that they should not be used, but eradicated,” explains Espinosa. According to the report by Friends of the Earth, Biofakes, the hoax of bio-plastics, these are nothing more than "a false manual solution, promoted by the packaging industry mainly with the aim of perpetuating the model of use and throw away in order to increase their profits.
The head of Agriculture and Livestock at Greenpeace Spain, Luís Ferrerim, gives another example in this regard, in this case related to the agri-food industry: "The Valle de Odieta company, responsible for the Noviercas (Soria) macro-farm project, which ultimately did not will be built, they call their farms biofarms. It is a great image laundering, which is accompanied by brochures of green aesthetics, and despite the fact that it is denounced before the government of Navarra and numerous organizations are pressing, they continue to do so.
Along the same lines, Espinosa also highlights all those so-called "implicit" techniques, which suggest that a product is eco without actually saying so and which are "especially difficult to pursue and regulate". It is about using "containers of a certain color, with a certain image or iconography, which give us to understand that we are dealing with a sustainable product without this type of claim having been subjected to any control." For Friends of the Earth, this is information that "in no case is it verifiable and therefore should not be allowed", despite the fact that the Commission does not refer to it in its directive.
The same happens with some claims present in the food sector. “The industry uses strategies such as using cows grazing both in packaging and in milk advertising, or chickens laying eggs in the fields or piglets in the meadows of Extremadura. All of this is largely eco-posturing, since 94% of the meat and 90% of the milk produced in Spain comes from intensive farming”, explains Ferreirim. For the person in charge of Greenpeace, the marketing and advertising campaigns in which "products clearly coming from industrial processes with the natural and the artisanal are related, something that occurs, for example, in the case of cold cuts" are especially striking.
The Commission, for its part, insists that the new directive seeks to hinder companies from using this terminology. From this body they point out that “in a study carried out in 2020, the European Commission highlighted that 53.3% of the environmental claims analyzed in the EU were imprecise, misleading or unfounded and 40% were not accredited. These types of practices can create unequal competition situations in the EU market to the detriment of companies that are genuinely sustainable”. Therefore, the Commission urges "to respect minimum standards in relation to the accreditation of these allegations and the way in which they are reported, so that they must be verified by an independent party and must be proven with scientific data."
Ferrerim, however, highlights the chiaroscuro that exists when it comes to verifying certain information related to the environment, for example in the field of the meat industry. “Many companies are able to prove their supposed sustainability using quantitative data that, once analyzed, ends up being misleading,” he says. A good example of this is that to measure the emission of greenhouse gases and the contamination of water by nitrogen, figures are used that refer to each kilo of meat. “As much as fewer gases are emitted or less polluted for each kilo of meat, the truth is that the heads of cattle grow exponentially. This means that, in the end, the meat industry is contaminating more but it can put on the medal that it is reducing emissions", explains Ferreirim, a practice that while being illegal and being scientifically proven, is still misleading when subjected to a Detailed analysis. “According to data from the FAO, the number of pigs has multiplied by six since the 1960s. Therefore, fewer gases are emitted per animal but there are many more animals. What good is the measure?
Along the same lines, Ferreirim explains that “many companies claim that they have reduced the emission of greenhouse gases, which they achieve simply by planting trees, but in many cases without modifying a single one of their processes. The consumer is satisfied thinking that companies work for the environment but in reality they only use patches that do not reduce emissions, but rather compensate those that already exist”.
Another of the main deceptions of the food sector to pass off as ecological some proposals that really are not, and that are difficult to eradicate even with the new proposal of the Commission, are -according to the person in charge of Greenpeace- those that refer to well-being animal. "Today, the interprofessional sector of the pig sector has its own animal welfare certification stamps, that is, they themselves are certifying their own production, so we find ourselves in surreal situations such as some meat from macro-farms reaching us with a welfare stamp. animal”, explains Ferreirim.
To alleviate this situation, the Commission proposes to "prohibit new public labeling schemes, unless they are formulated at EU level, and any new private scheme will have to demonstrate a greater environmental ambition than existing ones and obtain prior approval in order to be eligible." authorized. There are detailed rules on eco-labels in general: they must also be credible and transparent, and must be independently verified and regularly reviewed.” For Friends of the Earth, however, the proposal falls short, also with respect to labeling. “The EU already has an Ecolabel, voluntary but supported by a supervision mechanism. That should be enough," concludes Espinosa.
