How Pickler approaches climate/carbon-neutral claims.

Climate- or carbon-neutral claims are quite common within packaging. However, they're complex and often scrutinized to be misleading towards consumers.

At Pickler, we follow the Green Claims Directive and ACM's approach towards climate/carbon-neutral claims in packaging. Which is the following:

The rules for making climate-neutral claims

Climate-neutral (or carbon-neutral) cannot be used as an absolute term when based on (partial) carbon compensation. Claiming climate neutrality gives the impression that the product has no emissions, which is almost never the case.
Generally, make sure the substantiation and evidence of any sustainability claim is clear and understandable. Mixing explanations about a specific product and company ambitions can be confusing for consumers.
- For example, don't use your company's, office's, or production facility's 'carbon-neutral' claim, as a claim for your products.
Claims and the evidence for claims must be as up-to-date as possible. When outdated data is used, it depends on the circumstances of the case, how it's assessed.
- This should mainly be viewed from a consumer's perspective: does a consumer think that a claim is based on very recent data or data from 5 years ago? Often, the former will be the case.
The ACM can impose fines and injunctions for misleading sustainability claims. Earlier, the ACM conducted investigations into the claims of four companies. All these companies have made commitments to the ACM. These can be found here and here.

Be careful with climate-neutral claims

Overall, we advise you to be cautious/prevent making product climate-neutral claims as:

It's scientifically impossible for a product to emit zero emissions throughout its life cycle.
It rarely passes a review from anti-greenwashing instances.
The EU's Green Claim Directive will ban carbon-neutral claims by 2026.

Learn how to prevent greenwashing for your packaging here.