Oral
Abstract
Research summary supplied by the authors
Greenwashing is unfortunately a very diffused practice in many sectors of commerce. Towards the Green Deal, Europe is setting out a commitment to tackle false environmental claims by ensuring that buyers receive reliable, comparable and verifiable information reducing the risk of ‘greenwashing’. In the document “Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive)” i, we can read that preliminary studies commissioned showed that “a considerable share of environmental claims (53.3%) provide vague, misleading or unfounded information about products’ environmental characteristics across the EU and a wide range of product categories”, and that “out of the 344 sustainability claims assessed, authorities considered that in over half of the cases (57.5%), the trader did not provide sufficient elements allowing for judgement of the claim’s accuracy”. In my past presentations, I have shown the importance of leather's bio-based content in ensuring intrinsic circularity, which is an important parameter to consider in a wider sustainability parameters framework. CEN TC 411 commission is working on new European standards supporting Carbon Neutrality ambition and ensuring clear comparable communication. Among these standards EN 16848ii sets the basis for a transparent Business-to-Business communication, supporting producers to develop future articles following eco-design guidelines. Our paper shows an example of EN 16848 communication of a leather material considering the mandatory information requested by this standard.