Products and sustainability: the boundary of misleading advertising

Fight against climate change is one of the major challenges for industry.
 
Companies of industrial sector are aware of consumers’ increased sensitivity to sustainability as the environmental impact of their products is one of the key factors influencing commercial choices. However, because of the growing importance of the criteria for which a product can be considered "sustainable", advertising messages emphasising environmental virtues of a product with the aim of making it more attractive must be formulated in a way that ensures consumer protection.
 
The Italian Institute of Advertising Self-Regulation (Istituto di Autodisciplina Pubblicitaria – IAP), in the function of self-regulating body for the entire advertising sector, tackled the issue of advertising communications with respect to the protection of the natural environment, introducing into its own Code of Self-Regulation a rule providing that commercial communications claiming or suggesting environmental or ecological benefits must be based on truthful, pertinent and scientifically verifiable evidence, by allowing to clearly understand the aspects of the product or the service advertised which the claimed benefits refer to.
 
When advertising their products, companies not unfrequently use terms such as 'sustainable', 'ecological', 'environmentally friendly' or 'zero impact', with the sole aim of attracting the attention of sustainability-conscious consumers. Greenwashing, i.e. the marketing strategy aimed at giving an environmentally positive image to a company or to a product, even in default of objective criteria or reliable and/or verifiable scientific data, is a misleading advertising that can be sanctioned.
 
Big companies operating in the consumer products sector seem to be mostly exposed to the control by the competent bodies. The Italian Competition Authority (Autorità Garante per la Concorrenza ed il Mercato – AGCM) plays a key role on protecting consumers from misleading advertising in messages promoting environmental virtues of products that are actually highly unsustainable.
 
Some remarkable decisions involved mineral water firms presenting their products as environmentally sustainable by using allegedly better performing bottling materials in terms of limited amount of plastic used and, consequently, lower amount of energy needed to produce such materials. However, inadequacy of the necessary data for the evidence of the reliability and truthfulness of the advertisements led the AGCM to assess the claims as misleading.
 
Another significant case in terms of the amount of the sanction (EUR 5 million) concerned a multinational company producing fuels in respect of an advertisement claiming the positive environmental impact of a certain type of fuel due to its characteristics and in relation to both fuel savings and reduction of gas emissions.
 
In order to avoid the unlawful practice of Greenwashing, advertising communications must be supported by elements of objective verifiability, or validated by third parties in a position of independence; an appropriate and correct use of advertising communications emphasising aspects of sustainability of a product is therefore essential because fight against the climate emergency is also achieved through the commitment against Greenwashing.