Environmental claims on goods and services

When your business is considering making environmental claims, you should always consider the effect of the total life cycle of a product or service, or of your overall activities, on the accuracy of your claims.

All aspects of your product’s or service’s environmental impact over its life cycle, including its supply chain, could be important, including:

• its component parts
• how and where it is manufactured, produced or carried out
• how it is transported from its place of manufacture or origin
• its use or performance
• the disposal of a product, and any waste or by-products
• the consequences of any environmental benefit claimed and the period in which it would be realised
• whether the product or service has an overall adverse impact

This does not mean that information about the full life cycle of your product or service must be included in every claim. You should consider what elements of the life cycle of a
product or service are most likely to be of interest to consumers when making an environmental claim and how they affect the accuracy of that claim.

Environmental claims may be based on a specific part of an advertised product's life cycle, or part of a business’s activities. It should be clear which aspect they refer to. They should not mislead consumers about the total environmental impact. A claim could itself be true, but misleading, if it suggests your product is greener than it is by ignoring some other aspect of its life cycle.

Claims should also make clear the limits of any life cycle assessment which your business has done. Where you have only been able to carry out a limited assessment, it may be possible to make specific claims based on that assessment, but that should be clearly explained. They must not mislead consumers. Any life cycle analysis used to back up a claim should be up to date.

Checklist for considering the full life cycle in environmental claims

Before making a claim, you should ask yourself:

• Does the claim reflect the whole product life cycle?
• By making a claim about one element of the product’s life cycle, does the claim mislead the consumer about other aspects? 
• Do I have to disclose the full life cycle of a product in all instances where an environmental claim is made?

You can find examples and more detail on these questions by downloading Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) guidance on environmental claims on goods and services (PDF, 505K).