Greenwashing: Definition, Examples and Penalties
Greenwashing is commercial communication that makes a product, a service or a company look greener than it actually is. In practice, a communication could amount to greenwashing when it puts forward an environmental benefit that is vague, unmeasurable or out of proportion with what the advertiser genuinely does, and is therefore liable to mislead the public.
This is no longer only a reputational matter. Directive (EU) 2024/825, known as Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition, expressly labels part of these practices as misleading under EU law. At GiveActions we assess advertising every day with our tool Alios, using the same rules that advertising ethics juries apply. This article sets out that doctrine, case by case.
One note on method first. We always use conditional wording. Calling a communication greenwashing is an assessment, not an automatic finding. Only a competent body, in Belgium the Jury for Ethical Advertising Practices, rules on it formally.
What is greenwashing, exactly?
Greenwashing almost always starts with an environmental claim. An environmental claim is any message, in any form, copy, voice-over, visual or label, stating or suggesting that a product, a service or an organisation has a positive, reduced or zero impact on the environment, or performs better than competitors on that front.
Everything else follows from a single distinction, the core of the doctrine: is the claim generic or specific?
Generic versus specific environmental claims
Under the definition set out in Directive (EU) 2024/825, a generic environmental claim is one that is not part of a sustainability label and whose specification is not provided in clear and prominent terms on the same medium.
In practice, a claim is generic when it suggests environmental performance without stating concretely what that performance covers. Eco-friendly, sustainable, environmentally friendly, green, ethical, responsible, good for the planet: on their own, each of these stays generic.
A claim becomes specific when the same medium explains what it means. Three mechanisms work:
- a figure tied directly to the impact, for instance 90 % recycled materials;
- a figure with a stated basis for comparison, for instance 65 % less plastic than the brand's standard bottles;
- a recognised third-party certification covering the thing being claimed, for instance furniture described as sustainable because it is FSC certified.
Three points deserve attention, because they run against intuition.
First, pointing to an in-house programme specifies nothing. An ad for sustainably grown apples, with an asterisk linking to the company's own sustainability programme on an external site, would remain generic. Linking out is good practice, but it does not say what the claimed performance actually consists of.
Second, the evidence has to sit at the right level. A tech company describing a product as responsible on the strength of its B Corp certification would remain generic, since that label covers the company rather than the product being advertised.
Third, the justification has to match the promise. Claiming that sorting your waste saves the planet would still be a generic claim, because the action invoked does not support excellent environmental performance. A class A appliance described as sustainable falls in the same category, since the energy class says nothing about manufacturing impact.
These three points are where the line actually falls, and where doubt about your own copy tends to start. Alios runs the same tests on a communication you submit, image, video, audio, PDF or text, and states, claim by claim, what would be missing to make it specific.
Greenwashing examples: what fails and what passes
Communications that could amount to greenwashing
- Packaging announced as 100 % recyclable and environmentally friendly, with nothing further. Stating that it is recyclable in the Belgian paper stream, for example, would have specified it.
- T-shirts described as more sustainable, with no figure and no certification.
- Sustainable bananas, with no supporting information.
- A bank advertising green investments and nothing more.
- Ethical gifts to be won. Local would not be an issue, ethical on its own would.
- A tagline such as Respect included, which can be read environmentally.
- A poster praising a retailer as responsible while putting several delivery methods on an equal footing, although their impacts differ widely. The Jury examined such a case and found no explanation at all allowing anyone to measure how the delivery was responsible.
- An event announcing that a more sustainable future starts here.
Communications that would not raise an issue on this ground
- A product made of 90 % recycled materials.
- An electric vehicle ad quantifying a 60 % cut in CO2 emissions compared with a petrol engine.
- A truck carrying the wording sustainable biofuel together with 60 % less CO2 than the average.
- T-shirts made from certified sustainable cotton, where the certification itself authorises the word.
- 100 % green and local electricity. In the energy sector, green electricity is accepted as a matter of advertising ethics.
- An Eco Pack shown next to +30 % free, where Eco clearly refers to economy rather than ecology.
When sustainable is only a topic
An important nuance: a claim only counts when it explicitly promotes a product, a service or an organisation. A university event on sustainable mobility, a bank offering better loan terms for homes with a top energy rating, a consultancy selling a green strategy tool, a programme about ecotourism: in each case the word describes a field rather than a performance, and would not be treated as a generic claim.
Labels and label-like symbols
Labels are the second major risk area, governed by two rules.
A label used in advertising must have a clearly identified origin and be certified by a third party, against transparent criteria, with no exaggeration of its scope. Widely recognised labels such as the EU Ecolabel, AB, FSC, PEFC, MSC, Fairtrade, GOTS, OEKO-TEX, Blauer Engel, Nordic Swan, Ecocert or B Corp raise no issue in that respect. Nutri-Score, the eco-score, the Möbius loop or a Made in Europe mark inside an EU circle are likewise treated as clear.
The second rule targets misleading signs. A symbol, pictogram or graphic element that borrows the visual codes of a label, typically a green circle with a message inside or underneath, could mislead the public into assuming a certification that does not exist. A green circle with a house and the words sustainable farming, a circle ringed with leaves reading 100 % natural ingredients, a green square reading reusable and greener, a circle pairing a wind turbine with wind energy, or a circled green leaf next to sustainable mobility: all of these could be problematic.
A self-declared label is not prohibited as such, but it must be explained on the medium or link to a page describing how it works. A company logo, by contrast, is not a label.
Carbon neutrality: a rule of its own
Carbon neutral, carbon neutrality, zero carbon, climate neutral and net zero follow a separate regime. Claiming, on the basis of greenhouse gas offsetting, that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact in emissions terms is prohibited.
These terms therefore cannot be used at the level of a product, a service or a company. A carbon neutral product, a company declaring itself carbon neutral by 2050, or an ambiguous line such as on the road to carbon neutrality in 2050 would all be problematic.
They remain usable when they clearly refer to a wider scale, a country, the European Union or the world. Contributing to global carbon neutrality, working towards a carbon neutral society, or announcing a net zero commitment while defining the term precisely against a recognised framework such as SBTi would not raise an issue. Note as well that offsetting emissions or managing a carbon footprint are not synonyms for carbon neutrality, and that a car advertising zero CO2 emissions in use is stating a technical fact.
Exaggeration and proportionality
A final angle, more qualitative: the advertising message must be proportionate to the actual scale of the advertiser's sustainability efforts and to the properties of the product. It must not unduly suggest a complete absence of negative impact.
Car advertising claiming that driving this model emits no pollution at all would suggest zero impact across the whole life cycle, which would be exaggerated. The same brand announcing 0 g of CO2 per kilometre in use, with the mandatory sector disclosures, would stay proportionate. Likewise, an energy company still heavily invested in fossil fuels may say it invests in renewables, but not that it devotes all its time to green energy.
Who penalises greenwashing in Belgium?
In Belgium the JEP, the Jury for Ethical Advertising Practices, is the advertising industry's self-regulatory body. It examines complaints from the public about commercial communication and can recommend that a campaign be amended or withdrawn. Its decisions carry no fine, but they are public and expose the advertiser to genuine reputational risk. The system works after the fact: the advertising has already run by the time a decision lands.
Alongside this sits market practices law, which treats misleading claims as unfair commercial practices, enforced by the supervisory authorities and the ordinary courts.
What Directive (EU) 2024/825 changes
Directive (EU) 2024/825 amends EU consumer protection law and applies from 27 September 2026. Three changes carry most of the weight:
- generic environmental claims are prohibited where the advertiser cannot demonstrate recognised, excellent environmental performance;
- carbon neutrality claims based on offsetting are prohibited at product level;
- sustainability labels that rest on no certification scheme and are not established by public authorities are prohibited.
In other words, what is today a matter of advertising ethics becomes largely a matter of legal compliance. Organisations have every reason to review their materials, packaging and campaigns now.
How to avoid greenwashing
- Replace every vague adjective with a measurable fact, with a figure and, where you compare, an explicit basis for comparison.
- Put the specification on the same medium as the claim, prominently.
- Use only third-party certified labels at the relevant level, and avoid any visual that could pass for a label.
- Drop carbon neutrality at product, service or company level.
- Scale the strength of the message to the scale of the actual effort.
At GiveActions we review communications against these rules before they run. Get in touch if you would like your campaigns checked.
