The Green Credibility Checklist
- from the Total Environment Centre
Need to check that your environmental claims are valid? Run your claims through this quick checklist to make sure your claims will stand up to legal and consumer scrutiny.....
1. Motive: Why are we making this green claim or taking a corporate position on environment or sustainability?
The right answer is that environmental net benefit will be created as a prerequisite, with commercial or other organisational benefit following from that. We need more products, and businesses and other organisations that are greener and more sustainable. While it is entirely appropriate to be wary when making environmental claims, brand owners are urged to rise to the challenge of getting green marketing right. We all lose if brand owners with potential to make genuinely green or greener offerings of goods and services are scared off and decide it’s all too hard. We also lose if marketing professionals are discouraged from applying their consumer savvy and creative skills to sell sustainability.
This checklist aims to help recruit more green marketers by building confidence about going greener, and making it safer for well-meaning brand owners, while insisting that the price of making environmental claims is delivering value to the environment in return.
2. Knowledge: Are we adequately informed or skilled up to understand relevant environmental issues before making claims?
Making sound environmental claims is often complex and sometimes daunting territory. You can’t just take one or two items in isolation and ignore the whole life cycle of a product, or the full profile of the organisation making the claims. Ignorance and misunderstanding are key drivers of greenwash, far more so than deliberate lying or willful exaggeration. So it’s important to get informed and build awareness of the many complexities of environmental issues, and also understand how greenwash happens and of ore shipped. Of course greenwash is not only about words and verbal or written statements. Labelling, pictures, symbols, graphics, even the use of colour can be misleading to customers or citizens.
This checklist emphasises taking the broad view rather than relying on a narrow definition of what’s true. Also, the stronger the truth of your core claim or claims, the more confidence you should feel in revealing where there are uncertainties or other qualifications to your story.
3. The Truth: Telling the truth is obviously vital, as is clarity, but are you using the truth in the right way?
A common trap in green marketing is that just because a claim is true in a narrow sense doesn’t mean it can’t be misleading in the broader context. For example packaging may be recyclable, but if the packaging volume is excessive then it still represents a waste of energy and resources. Other frequently-cited examples where truth alone is not enough include claims like ‘CFC-free’ when CFCs have been banned globally for over two decades, or ‘phosphate-free’ for a cleaning product that wouldn’t have included phosphate as an ingredient anyway. Fudging on the truth through vague or ambiguous statements muddies the waters, so use language with precision and clarity (also see ‘Core Words’ below).
4. Materiality: Building on truth, is what we’re claiming material i.e. does it really matter, or is it really inconsequential?
Establishing materiality is closely related to the limitations of using truth alone to shape environmental claims, and provides the framing for overcoming the “truth-is-not- always-enough” problem. Claiming energy efficiency or highlighting a ‘green energy’ power source for an electronic device that is inherently low energy consumption in any case would be misleading if its real carbon footprint issue is the embodied energy in its manufacture and materials (e.g. metals, plastics etc.); or there are significant toxicity concerns; or, on a more positive note, if use of the device delivers far greater energy or resource- saving than making or operating it. As a rule its better to choose the most material green attributes to highlight and make sure they are true as well.
This checklist recommends assessing materiality as a key methodology for understanding and testing what’s important and what’s not. Help is at hand. Once you look you’ll be amazed how much information is available.
5. Full disclosure: Material omissions are a problem too, so are you sure that everything significant is on the table?
The problem isn’t just what you say in claims. It can also be what you don’t say. Highlighting one or two positive green attributes, no matter how well supported they are, is rendered meaningless and misleading if you ignore material negatives. Accentuating the positives and eliminating the negatives just won’t work if you want to be credible in an ever-greener marketplace. Beyond environment, in terms of sustainability more broadly, disclosure needs to apply to relevant social and economic factors as well. Claiming green credibility while exploiting workers, for example, is a form of greenwash.
This checklist recommends that you always think lateral, and check and double check: Is there anything else we should know? What’s missing?
6. Life Cycle: Are we looking at everything along the whole value chain and life cycle, or is something we should know invisible to us?
Products often have extensive life histories that are largely invisible to the end consumer. This is a key reason why environmental claim-making can be so complex. An everyday product containing metal and plastic components could trace its origins to far-off mines and oil drilling in sensitive environmental areas, or more positively could be produced largely from recycled materials. Paper products could be sourced from fully-accredited sustainable plantation forests, or in the worst case from illegally-logged old-growth rainforests. Manufacturing may occur in clean, fair workplaces or polluting sweat-shops. Packaging or products might look great, but pose serious problems for waste disposal and also recycling due to toxic ingredients or use of composite materials. An organisation highlighting a green offering may be a social and environmental laggard in its main operations, which must ring alarm bells, or it could a sustainability leader with an even better story to tell. Best practice for brand owners means requiring their suppliers to vouchsafe products and to check their suppliers’ claims, to ensure integrity in their own processes, and to extend producer responsibility beyond the consumer. For marketing professionals, it’s about digging deep!
This checklist advises that making green claims imposes a responsibility to check the whole life cycle of a product - the full value chain involved in its raw materials, production, distribution and post-consumer phases - and the bona fides of all relevant organisations.
7. Self-control: Are we sure we’re not getting carried away by over-enthusiasm or our aspiration, or even by commercial rivalry?
Enthusiasm for delivering better environmental outcomes is to be applauded and more and more organisations are promoting their aspiration to be greener and more socially responsible. Like most of us, people working in marketing are not immune to getting carried along by their enthusiasm to make a difference for society or the environment, or to beat a rival.
Over-enthusiasm, however, especially when combined with ignorance of the complexities of environmental issues, frequently leads to greenwash. Integrity in green marketing and positioning demands that any claims be based on how things are, rather than how you wish them to be or even plan they will become. Another reason for excessive enthusiasm overriding green marketing good sense is good old-fashioned competition. A desire to outdo or catch up with a business rival’s products or positioning can mean caution or due process gets sidelined.
This checklist warns against confusing what you hope or plan for your product or organisation with current performance. Stick to here-and-now facts and don’t let competitors spook you into making claims that won’t stand up. If you feel pressured by a competitor you may be better off challenging their claims rather than emulating them.
8. Core words: Do we really understand the meaning of core words that are being used in our claims, and are we protecting their integrity?
There is a group of core words or phrases that lies at the heart of much environmental or sustainability claim-making and are most typically associated with greenwash. They include terms such as Eco-friendly, Natural, Non-toxic, Green, Pollutant-free, Carbon Neutral, Ethical, Fair, Recyclable, Low-impact, Environmentally-friendly, Energy efficient, Low carbon, Not tested on animals, Clean, Zero carbon, Zero waste. These are important terms, and they deserve respect and protection. They should only be used if they are true, if materiality has been established, and if you are able to fully disclose evidence to support the claims. Otherwise they are generalisations that may sound impressive but are devoid of credibility.
This checklist highlights the dangers of misusing core words and phrases by using them to make general claims of green virtue without real evidence. Over time new core terms will emerge, like Carbon Neutral in recent years, and these also should be recognised and respected.
9. Proof Points: Are we backing up our claims with specific ‘proof points’ that are accessible to the target audience?
Not surprisingly, the consumers initially most likely to purchase products or support organisations based on green credentials are also those likely to be most informed (and therefore potentially sceptical of environmental claims) and to demand proof. They are likely to include some of your employees or shareholders as well as your customers and end-consumers. The good news is that if you can please this tough crowd, like the ever-more numerous Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) consumers, then you’ve likely crossed a threshold to green credibility. If you’re claiming a value proposition of green or sustainable, then you need to back it up with ‘proof points’ such as easy to understand references, statistics and credible and defensible third-party research sources.
Making claims of being Carbon Neutral is a classic case in point, requiring proof points to show exactly what is covered by the claim, for what period, and exactly how any claimed performance has been achieved. If that sounds hard, it needs to be!
This checklist stresses a simple formula: if you can’t find legitimate proof points and explain them simply, then don’t make the claim.
10. Getting help: If we can’t answer all of the points in this checklist with confidence, who can help us to get it right?
Many organisations, and especially small and medium-sized enterprises, don’t have internal environmental
experts or regular external advisers. There are numerous options for getting expert support and advice to unravel the complexities of environmental issues, to establish both truth and materiality in claim-making, to assemble evidence of performance and to frame proof points.
Examples of organisations in Australia that could help include official regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (www.accc.gov.au), marketing industry bodies and other business groups, standards bodies like Standards Australia (www.standards.org.au), labelling organisations such as Good Environmental Choice Australia (www.aela.org.au), environmental consultants and professional service firms, and community watchdogs - green groups like the Total Environment Centre (www.tec.org.au) and consumer advocates like CHOICE (www.choice.com.au).
This checklist’s advice is clear: if you have any doubts then get help, because risking greenwash is risky business for any organisation.
IF YOU DO NOTHING MORE, ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS BEFORE MAKING ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS
1. If I make this green statement, can it be proven to be true 100 percent of the time?
2. Even if it is true, does the green statement really matter i.e. is the problem being avoided or remedied substantial and significant, or trivial and insignificant?
3. Are there any other environmental or sustainability issues being overlooked, especially negative ones?
4. Whatever is being claimed, and whoever is making the claims, are they backed up by firm evidence?