Lucas Boudet is Director General at EASA
The UN Climate Change Conference, which recently took place in Egypt, stressed the importance of sustainable patterns of consumption and production to address climate change. The European Commission, in line with its ambitions set out in the European Green Deal, has recently tabled a proposal for a Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green transition aiming to tackle the issue of greenwashing and will soon issue one on Substantiating environmental claims.
Everyone in our society bears a share of the responsibility to rise
to the challenges related to climate change. Advertisers are very much
aware of the instrumental role they can play. Marketing must make
sustainable products attractive and desirable to consumers. Responsible
marketers need to be able to tread a fine line, communicating about the
positive environmental attributes of their products and services whilst
staying clear from any greenwashing. This is where the numerous unique
assets of collective advertising self-regulation (SR) come into play. EU
Commissioner for Justice underlined that “[European Advertising Standards Alliance, EASA’s] self-regulatory
approach to ensure that companies advertise products and services
responsibly whilst staying clear from greenwashing has impressive
results.” (...)
