Environmental Marketing in Europe

by Avv. Felix Hofer

1. The European Approach

1.1. Up till now the Europe Union did not issue a set of harmonizing principles and rules meant to specifically govern 'environmental/green marketing'.

The main reason for such approach was not disinterest from the EU's institutional bodies towards the issue, but probably the conviction of being the traditional regulations on commercial communication perfectly suitable to cover this specific area in a sufficient and proper way.

In fact, these provisions had already established a number of basic principles requiring all commercial communication to:

• not be misleading to the targeted public²,
• be “readily recognizable as such and be distinguishable from editorial content” (and all surreptitious promotional messages to be explicitly banned)³,
• not encourage behaviour grossly prejudicial to the protection of the environment⁴,
• not to result in a misleading commercial practice⁵, a result that would occur any time:
• «it contains false information and is therefore untruthful or in any way, including overall presentation, deceives or is likely to deceive the average consumer, even if the information is factually correct, in relation to one or more of the following elements..: (a)..the nature of the product, (b) its...main characteristics...such as its availability, benefits, risks, execution, composition, accessories, .. method and date of manufacture or provision, delivery, fitness for purpose, usage, .. or
  the results to be expected from its use»⁶,
• «it omits material information that the average consumer needs, according to the context»⁷, where «information requirements established by Community law in relation to commercial communication including advertising or marketing, a non-exhaustive list of which is contained in Annex II, shall be regarded as material»⁸.

1.2. Obviously the EU did not miss the fact that environmental aspects had become more and more relevant for a very broad range of areas, impacting with significant (and frequently) negative effects both, on contextual natural elements (polluting air, water, soil, nature in general) as well as on manufacturing processes (e.g. energy sources and consumption, carbon emissions, etc) and on products' life cycle, their – or their components' - waste management and disposal. The EU Commission's Directorates General also realized that 'green advertising' resulted in a very appealing marketing tool to an increasing number of companies: to those trying to reach out to an environmental conscious target public as well as to those involved in particularly critical manufacturing processes (and therefore intensely seeking to improve their corporate image with the general public).

This additional aspect brought the issue of environmental claims (and of their control) into play. To the purpose a research project was assigned⁹ for preparing appropriate guidelines to be considered by advertisers when using such claims in their campaigns. The project's final report (dated December 2000) basically recommended that environmental claims should refer and adhere to the principles and indication of the ISO international standards¹⁰ on 'Eco-Labelling'.

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