Consultation outcome

Draft guidance on environmental claims

This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

Consultation response (PDF, 390KB)

Detail of outcome

The CMA has now published its final guidance for businesses making environmental claims to help them understand and comply with their existing obligations under consumer law. Alongside the guidance, the CMA has also published a video for businesses and short guide, all of which can be found on our Green Claims Code pages.

In January 2022 the CMA will begin a review of compliance with consumer law. Should we find evidence of non-compliance we will consider whether further action such as enforcement is necessary. We may also take action earlier where there is evidence that consumer law is being broken.

Feedback received

Advertising Association

Adfree Cities

Alupro

Advertising Standards Authority

ASDA

Benders Paper Cups

Bidfood Catering Supplies

Bidfood Foodservice Group

British Plastics Federation (BPF)

British Retail Consortium (BRC)

British Glass

Celebration Packaging Ltd

Centrica

Changing Markets Foundation

Citizens Advice

ClientEarth

Compare Ethics

Co-operative Group

Cromwell Polythene

Dairy UK

Danone UKI

Dart Products Europe

Data & Marketing Association

Ecosurety

EDF

eGreen International Limited

Essity

Euro Packaging UK Ltd

Fairtrade Foundation

Fibre Trace

Food and Drink Federation (FDF)

Gafbros LTD

Good Energy

Go-Pak

Influence Map

James Cropper PLC

Lifescape Project

Mark Durston

Marks and Spencer

Nestle

New Weather Institute

No7 Beauty Company

Not1Bean

Oatly UK

Ombudsman Services

On-Pack recycling Label (OPRL)

OVO Energy

Pactiv Evergreen

Papercraft Ltd

Policy Hub

Possible

Professor Iain Black

Regalzone

Reckitt

RECOUP

Royal Mail

Royal Society of Chemistry

SC Johnson

Scottish Water

Scottish Power

Social Market Foundation

Sovereign Partners Ltd

Stanstead Airport Watch

techUK

Textile Recycling Association

The Nappy Alliance

The Packaging Federation

Transformers Foundation

Trading Standards Wales

Two Sides

Ukie

Wildlife and Countryside Link

Which?

WRAP

Zalando

Zero Waste Scotland

Detail of feedback received

Details of responses are found above.


Original consultation

Summary

The CMA has issued, for consultation, draft consumer protection law guidance for all businesses making environmental claims.

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

The purpose of the guidance is to help those businesses to understand and comply with their existing obligations under consumer protection law.

In addition to the draft guidance and consultation document, the CMA is publishing a literature review, which summarises the many surveys, articles and research reports that we have considered while developing the draft guidance.

The CMA invites interested parties to respond to the questions posed in the consultation document no later than 5pm on Friday 16 July 2021.

The CMA plans to publish the final version of its consumer protection law guidance in August / September 2021. Alongside this, the CMA will also issue a short guide for consumers to help them to understand the sort of questions they should be asking themselves when deciding whether or not they should trust environmental claims being made by businesses.

How we use your data

We are seeking only anonymised responses to our surveys. We do not need to know the identities of consumers or businesses for this work and would generally prefer you not to supply these.

However, we have given respondents to the survey for other interested parties the option of providing us with their contact details, so that we can contact them for further information to help us with this work.

If we receive any information relating to individuals from which they can be identified, we will be processing personal data. When processing personal data, we comply with data protection law. We will be processing under Article 6.1 (e) of the GDPR and section 8 of the Data Protection Act 2018 – processing necessary for the exercise of our statutory functions.

We will not be sharing the personal data with any third party and will only keep it until the end of the project. For more information about how the CMA processes personal data for its work and your rights in relation to that data, including your right to complain, please see our Privacy Notice.

Documents

Draft guidance (PDF, 359KB)

Consultation document (PDF, 275KB)

Literature review (PDF, 1.15MB)

Updates to this page

Published 26 January 2023

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