A leaf graphic and the word sustainable can suggest a great deal without explaining very much. Customers may read that message as a claim about the entire product when the business only has evidence about one material or one part of its packaging.
For a New Zealand supplier, the answer is often a more precise statement. Specific wording gives customers something they can understand and gives the business a clearer claim to support.
Match the sentence to the evidence
The Commerce Commission's environmental-claims guidance says claims need to be accurate and substantiated. Its advice on making accurate claims also stresses having reasonable grounds when the claim is made.
Read the proposed wording alongside the supplier documentation or test evidence. Does it cover the finished product, a component, the packaging or the production process? Is it relevant to the product actually being sold? An accurate statement about a carton should not drift into an unsupported statement about everything inside it.
Avoid expanding a supplier's carefully limited wording into a broader promise for a website headline. If the evidence is technical, ask someone qualified to explain what it supports and what it does not.
Review the whole presentation
Customers receive a message from photographs, symbols, headings and qualifications together. A limitation buried in small print may not resolve an overly broad impression created by the main advertisement. Review product pages, shelf labels, sales sheets and social posts as a connected set.
Keep the evidence where the people approving copy can find it, with a date and an owner. Set a review point when the supplier, material or production method changes. Otherwise an old claim can remain in circulation after the reason for using it has disappeared.
Clear environmental information helps a customer compare products on their actual merits. It can also make a sales conversation more confident: the team knows exactly what it is saying, where the evidence comes from and when to ask for specialist advice.
Explore more law articles from BusinessTalk.
Related reading: Greenwashing: Environmental Claims and the Fair Trading Act.
