Piercing the green smokescreen

Awareness on environmental conservation has been influencing consumers’ buying decisions. Consumers, who are keen to play their part in environment protection, prefer to buy products and services that they consider environmentally sustainable. In most cases, they rely on claims made by companies on product labels and in advertisements to arrive at the conclusion that those are eco-friendly or green, biodegradable, and have the least impact on the environment. The cutthroat competitions among companies to woo these consumers to buy their products led to many companies making false and misleading environmental claims. The “Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Greenwashing and Misleading Environmental Claims, 2024” issued by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) are aimed at preventing misleading environmental claims and ensuring transparency and accuracy in advertisements related to environmental sustainability. It also brings into focus the issue of protecting the commercial interest of traditional agricultural farm produce from the Northeast region, which is known to be organic and produced in an environmentally sustainable manner but lacks due certification from an authorised agency to substantiate it. The guidelines mandate companies to substantiate their environmental claim with credible evidence. Manufacturers and service providers will now be required to provide detailed information on the methodology and data used to support their claims. This is a praiseworthy move as it will boost consumer trust, but achievement of the objectives will also require the presence of strong enforcement backed by robust monitoring and inspection mechanisms in every state. The guidelines require all advertisements making environmental claims not to use generic terms such as ‘clean’, ‘green’, ‘ecofriendly’, ‘eco-consciousness’, ‘good for''plants','minimal impact’, ‘carbon neutral’, ‘cruelty-free’, ‘natural’, ‘organic’, ‘pure','sustainable’, or regenerative or other claims without adequate, accurate, and accessible qualifiers and substantiation and disclosure. It also mandates that any person making an environmental claim shall disclose all material information in the relevant advertisements or communications, either by inserting a QR code or any such technology or digital medium to disclose detailed material information in the relevant advertisement or communication. Awareness among consumers about the guidelines will be crucial to reporting any violation of the mandatory provisions of the guidelines to the state authorities, or CCPA. If consumers are not made fully aware to optimally use relevant information even when information mandated by the guidelines is provided, then it will not serve the purpose. Most people often skip information provided in product leaflets while buying electronic gadgets and tend to go by the claim made by manufacturers on product labels or by retailers. The consumer rights forums or environment protection groups need to shoulder the responsibility to raise consumer awareness to take their environmental sensitivity to its applications through application of their knowledge to cross verify environmental claims. At the same time, creating a level playing field for new entrepreneurs from regions like the Northeast through adequate support for green or organic certification is crucial to prevent large companies having easy access to such support systems monopolising the market share of environmentally sustainable products. Under the guidelines, genuine environmental claims by an entrepreneur or a startup without proper certification and credible evidence could be rejected by consumers or considered by CCPA to be violative of the prohibitions. The hard reality is that the National Accreditation Body for Organic Products under the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) has so far granted accreditation to only one agency under NPOP in the entire region. As a result, the share of organic food products from the region in the increasing export market of organic products carrying the NPOP logo and label continues to be insignificant. Without easy and affordable access to organic certification, ambitious missions like Mission Organic Value Chain Development in Northeastern Region (MOVCDNER) will end up expanding areas under organic produce and boosting production, but products will not fetch remunerative benefits to producers. Strangely, there have not been much visible efforts by the states in the region to strengthen the organic certification ecosystem, even though the area under organic cultivation has expanded and these organic fields have also recorded a substantial increase in production. In the event of further delay in building the organic certification ecosystem and infrastructure and reducing commercial gain looming large over the producers, the potential shift away from organic farming cannot be ruled out. The CCPA may consider a special logo and label for product advertisements from the region to specify that products are from the “Northeast region” and produced under MOVCDNER to protect the genuine interests of traditional organic farm producers. This, however, must be a temporary measure, and the time-bound creation of organic certification systems in each state must not be relegated to the backburner. Apart from farm produce, green certifications in respect of other products and services from Northeast must be paid equal attention, as any manufacturing process or service delivery in the region has significant implications for its fragile ecology.