It just got a whole lot harder to make vague green claims thanks to a new EU regulation called EmpCo. But what does it actually mean for consumers wanting to make more informed shopping choices, and how will the brands they buy from have to adapt?
We asked Good On You co-founder Sandra Capponi to explain the basics in seven Q&As. Plus, she shares the behind-the-scenes work Good On You has been doing to prepare for the changes.
7 Q&As about EmpCo with Sandra Capponi
Having been at the helm of Good On You alongside co-founder Gordon Renouf for over a decade, Sandra Capponi has seen massive industry shifts where sustainability is concerned. From deep commitment and interest by big brands in the 2010s to more recent backtracking on targets and deprioritising of important climate goals. This September, the EU’s new EmpCo directive brought another change: namely, tightening the rules on how brands and retailers make green claims and evidence them.
The directive seems complex at first glance, and since Capponi has spent months reading the finer details, we asked her to break it down into what shoppers and brands really need to understand. The key takeaway from all this, as Capponi explains here, is something that Good On You has been advocating for since its inception: “It just comes back to saying what is true, being specific, and having evidence to back it up.”
Q: What is EmpCo?
A: EmpCo is a new set of EU rules set to guide sustainability claims and communications to consumers that is all about making greenwashing harder and more informed choices easier. EmpCo is short for Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive.
While EmpCo raises the bar on environmental communications, it also strengthens existing consumer protection rules around misleading claims and practices, including those relating to the social characteristics of products and brands.
The Directive reinforces the principles that Good On You has long advocated for: brands being specific about what they’re claiming, backing it up with evidence, and making more detailed information easily accessible. Now that these rules are clear, there are no more excuses for the lack of transparency.
Now that these rules are clear, there are no more excuses for the lack of transparency.
Many EU member states, including Germany and Italy, have already adopted the directive into national law. We can expect more guidance to emerge over time as individual countries work through how the rules apply in practice.
Q: What does it mean for consumers, and for brands?
A: Consumers will have better assurances that the claims they’re seeing are reliable, which in turn will help them make more informed choices about the brands they buy from or choose not to.
As brands and retailers work to make their claims compliant, shoppers can expect to see clearer and more detailed claims, with vague statements such as “eco-friendly” or “positive choice” being a thing of the past.
For brands, EmpCo means that they won’t be able to make broad generic green claims anymore unless they can demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance. Everything will need to be specific and backed up, which could be by verifiable evidence or a compliant sustainability label.
Claims will need to be specific and backed up by verifiable evidence or a compliant sustainability label.
Retailers, including eCommerce platforms, that help consumers compare brands and products need to make sure they use precise sustainability categorisation or filters, provide clear definitions of what the filters mean, and make more detailed information available close to the claims or within one click.
The rules for sustainability labels have changed too: they need to be backed by a qualifying certification scheme or public authority.
Q: Will EmpCo make it easier for consumers to compare the sustainability of different brands or products?
A: Anything that means brands are putting out more reliable information is a good thing for consumers. But with different sustainability labels, claims and information to navigate, it can still be challenging for consumers to make sense of it all and make meaningful comparisons between brands.
If consumers are looking to compare actions on key issues they care about, then Good On You’s ratings can be helpful since they provide a consistent, independent assessment based on public evidence and a methodology that is peer-reviewed and regularly updated.
Multi-brand retailers and shopping platforms also have an important role to play in making this information accessible and useful for consumers, and we’ve evolved our guidance to help them do that.
Q: How has Good On You adapted and prepared for this change?
A: From the beginning of Good On You, we’ve been about making sustainability information more transparent and accessible, and really earning the trust of shoppers. Our preparation for EmpCo has built on that.
In the last year, knowing the regulation was coming, we’ve been making sure that we meet the transparency requirements of being a sustainability label scheme under EmpCo.
That means evolving our ratings processes and governance to further protect the independence of our ratings and their trustworthiness, which is so important to us. We’ve formalised our rating team’s autonomy; we’ve published our sustainability label scheme rules; and we’ve appointed a new independent monitoring body, called Odonata.
That means our top ratings, “Good” (4/5) and “Great” (5/5), and our Rated Good On You Mark, can now be used as a compliant sustainability label. And our ratings data can support compliant environmental and social claims made by brands and retailers.
Our top ratings, 'Good' (4/5) and 'Great' (5/5) can now be used as a compliant sustainability label.
One of the cool things about what we’re doing is that, while most sustainability label schemes require brands to pay to be assessed, Good On You doesn’t. We can rate any retail brand based on public evidence, and brands don’t have to opt in or pay to be rated. As far as we know, we’re the only scheme operating like this, and it’s meaningful because we’re not limiting access to comparative information. It’s holding us and brands even more accountable to what we’re saying to consumers.
It also removes the financial barriers of certification to the smaller brands that are doing the work and puts us in a better position to connect these lesser-known pioneers of sustainability with the shoppers that are looking for them, which is something that I’m personally really passionate about.
Q: What does substantiation of a sustainability claim look like?
A: The use of certification schemes and sustainability labels backed by a certification scheme is one way that brands can substantiate claims, but it’s not the only way. They can still make specific, fact-based claims that can be substantiated.
So that’s quite a technical nuance, but many brands are deferring to certification schemes.
We need to make sure that this doesn’t create a problem where only brands that can afford a certification are able to make sustainability claims. There has to be a world where small brands that are often leading on these issues can still communicate with confidence to consumers. I think we need to remember that it just comes back to saying what is true, being specific, and having evidence to back it up.
These are things we’ve been asking of brands and the industry for the decade that Good On You has been in existence and many others have been advocating for before then.
Q: But could this mean brands stop talking about their sustainability performance to avoid scrutiny? Could it backfire and prompt even more greenhushing?
A: There is a risk that brands will continue to step back on their sustainability communications and not be transparent enough with shoppers. Good On You ratings data already shows that the industry still has a long way to go when it comes to transparency on the important sustainability issues that consumers care about.
We’ve definitely seen a rise in greenhushing among brands and retailers in recent years, partly because with various regulations being in development, businesses have been unsure about what they can safely say, and I think it’s still early days for EmpCo. Some businesses are ahead of the game, of course.
Our ratings data already shows that the industry still has a long way to go in transparency on important sustainability issues.
But now that the rules are in effect, it’s up to brands and retailers to put this into practice and not make any more excuses for the lack of transparency that we’ve seen for such a long time. They can use these guidelines to communicate more to shoppers.
Q: What will happen if businesses are found to be making non-compliant claims?
A: They open themselves up to fines and other enforcement action from regulators under applicable national laws. But even just the scrutiny can attract a lot of public attention, so there’s huge financial and reputational risk for brands that don’t adhere.
