Greenwashing: new rules for communicating packaging sustainability
From 27 September 2026, new measures will begin to apply across the European Union to protect consumers from misleading or insufficiently substantiated environmental claims. What do they mean for packaging communication?
Sustainability has become one of the main messages used to communicate the benefits of products and packaging. Terms such as sustainable, eco-friendly, environmentally friendly and green are increasingly common on labels, websites and in advertising campaigns.
From 27 September 2026, the measures arising from Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition will strengthen the rules governing how these types of environmental benefits can be communicated.
The aim is to tackle greenwashing and make it easier for consumers to distinguish between substantiated environmental claims and generic or potentially misleading messages.
What is changing in environmental communication?
One of the most significant changes is the restriction of generic environmental claims where recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim cannot be demonstrated. Expressions such as “environmentally friendly”, “green” or “eco-friendly” will no longer be permitted as simple marketing claims without an appropriate basis.
It will also be prohibited to present an entire product or an entire company as sustainable when the environmental benefit relates only to a specific characteristic of the product or a particular activity. Similarly, sustainability labels will need to be based on a certification scheme or established by a public authority.
Another important change concerns climate-related claims. Claims stating that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions will not be permitted when they are based on carbon offsetting.
What does this mean for packaging?
For food companies and brands, this regulatory development makes it even more important for environmental characteristics communicated about packaging to be specific, understandable and verifiable.
Making a general statement that packaging is “sustainable” is not the same as communicating a specific, technically substantiated characteristic, such as its composition, a defined reduction in material use or its recyclability when this has been assessed according to recognised criteria.
In this new context, technical data, testing and independent certifications become particularly important in supporting the environmental characteristics of packaging solutions.
At SP Group, we have been working for years on the development and validation of solutions aimed at improving recyclability and optimising material use, supported, where appropriate, by external assessments and certifications that provide objective information on their performance.
The new regulation therefore represents another step towards more precise, transparent and verifiable environmental communication, where the challenge is not only to progress towards packaging with a lower environmental impact, but also to clearly explain and substantiate its specific characteristics.