When walking through German drugstores, it is striking how often customers’ green conscience is addressed: the bag of liquid soap from dm, for example, is said to be “climate-neutral”. Other care and cosmetic products advertise on their packaging that they are “CO₂-neutral” or even “climate-positive”. Regardless of whether it is the “eco-nappies” from Rossmann, the shower bottles from Nivea or the freezer bags from dm, consumers are attracted to ecological advertising messages everywhere. But they don’t always correspond to the truth.
German Environmental Aid has In several cases frauds were exposed and successfully sued. The suspicion in each case: greenwashing. Manufacturers made their products greener than they are. Drugstore leader dm then announced that it wanted to move to the next higher authority, the Federal Court of Justice.
The EU Commission is also in the process of taking action against inadmissible greenwashing. It is currently developing a guideline that is intended to curb the large number of unfounded environmental statements (green claims) made by companies. One requirement would be that corporations must substantiate individual advertising claims based on scientific findings.
The Personal Care and Detergent Industry Association (IKW) doesn’t like that at all. As can be seen from an internal template for the board meeting on Thursday afternoon, which the South German newspaper exists, the association intends to take action against it. Together with the lobby group Cosmetics Europe and the European AIM Brand Association, the IKW is looking for an “alternative regulatory approach” and methods that replace the planned approach. The IKW is officially concerned that German manufacturers, especially medium-sized companies, could fall behind European competitors.
The association believes that the federal government is on its side in resisting the directive. “At Council level (the Forum of Heads of State and Government of the EU, editor’s note), the German federal government expressed very fundamental reservations in initial statements against the obligation to verify environmental advertising proposed by the Commission and, in this respect, called for a fundamental revision of the draft directive.” , the template says.
“We fundamentally reject any form of greenwashing”
However, when asked about it, the association distances itself from its own paper for the board, which includes representatives of large corporations such as L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Beiersdorf. “As an association, we cannot speculate about concerns on the part of the federal government,” said a spokeswoman when asked. And further: “We fundamentally reject any form of greenwashing and are in favor of efficient, EU-wide uniform regulations against greenwashing.” The association does not want to undermine the green claims guidelines, emphasized IKW managing director Thomas Keizer at an association press conference on Thursday. At the same time, he welcomed the fact that there are alternative proposals and that the IKW has other associations as allies.
An insider says the whole thing is “the classic of typical lobbying behavior.” They agree with the directive in principle, but want to invalidate its core. One cannot be against sustainability for ethical and moral reasons. This would isolate you in society. However, we are striving for a solution that makes everyone happy. Also the industry.
According to the internal paper, the IKW considers it questionable whether the directive will be passed before the EU Parliament elections next summer. The vote was actually planned for the end of January. The vote is required for the directive to come into force. If that doesn’t work, it would hurt the beauty care and detergent industry. She could then continue as before for the time being.