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Demand for transparency and credible information to back up claims is growing from regulators, citizens, employees and investors. The fashion sector has been cited with greenwashing, where brands claim or imply that they are making more environmental progress than they really are. As a result, governments have evolved regulations around environmental claims, at the potential cost of millions to businesses that get it wrong.
Whilst welcome, the evolving regulatory landscape for environmental claims has created new fears and led to confusion for brands and retailers. Markets are evolving at different rates, making it difficult for companies to understand what is accurate and credible within each of the markets that they operate. As a result, companies are exposed to new reputational, financial and operational risks if they fail to take action now.
“Most global brands and retailers are feeling the effects of the fast-moving regulatory space on environmental claims. Their current manual claims-making process can be inefficient and difficult to scale. It requires multiple departments and huge time investment. Now, with fear of regulation and backlash, some companies are ‘greenhushing’ – not disclosing environmental claims or sharing progress, which some experts fear will lead to less industry collaboration, competition and progress towards environmental goals,” said Abbie Morris, CEO and co-founder of Compare Ethics.
“From the Compare Ethics community of 1,300+ impact professionals, we know that data quality, access and reliability are also major points of concern around the ability to make credible claims. The Gap Report™ from Compare Ethics is the first industry solution that gives businesses the assurance necessary to communicate environmental claims to consumers accurately at scale.”
Compare Ethics works closely with lawyers and market regulatory authorities to guarantee the veracity of its technology, ensuring data-supported environmental claims that meet regulatory requirements. Now, with the Gap Report, businesses can communicate environmental claims with confidence, reducing the time and cost of making compliant claims by 30-80%, and strengthening brand trust with customers, employees and investors.
For high street brand New Look, the Gap Report from Compare Ethics analysed 650+ products across 7,000+ data points in six weeks, enabling New Look to roll out 470+ compliant environmental claims in December. Operating across multiple markets, companies such as New Look have to analyse and align with dozens of new and emerging regulations, ensuring that each product claim meets environmental claims criteria.
“By using the Gap Report from Compare Ethics, we have been able to test and learn on the automation of communicating our product claims,” said Sue Fairley, head of Sourcing, Sustainability and Quality at New Look. “We tested across hundreds of products which highlighted any gaps and created a foundation for better use of data, to scale up for accurate communication, as well as running on line tests of clearer communication icons.”
