WWF Guide to Greenwashing

Short for biological. Often used on labels saying ‘bio-based’, meaning made from living organisms, usually plants.

It will break down in the natural environment with the help of bacteria and microbes. There is no legal time limit - it can take anywhere from 1 week to 400 years to break down in the environment. You may buy a biodegradable sponge which lasts longer than you do!

This doesn’t mean that the product or business does not produce any emissions. Instead, it means that the company have ‘offset’ their emissions by investing in projects which supposedly absorb an equal amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. See our other page on carbon offsetting.

This is another way of saying carbon neutral, often meaning the company has offset their carbon footprint, or reduced their environmental impact in some way. 

Perhaps the most widely misunderstood claim. There are two types of compostable:

Compostable - this means it can be broken down via ‘industrial composting’ which uses a big machine with lots of organic matter, a high temperature and air flow to compost items. It does not mean you can put it on your compost pile in your garden, or in your food bin.

Home compostable - look for the ‘home compostable’ certification logo, this means it can go in your home compost pile and possibly in your food waste bin (if your council can accept that type of item).

It will break down. Technically most things are degradable, even plastic bags. There is no legal time limit on how long something can take before companies can call it degradable.

Short for ecological, but often used to mean environmentally friendly. There are no rules requiring companies to show something is beneficial to the environment to be able to use this term.

There are no rules to show that something is beneficial to the environment, and the term ‘friendly’ has no legal definition either.

A buzzword to mean environmentally friendly and good for the planet. Often when it’s used it does not include details to justify what it means, so can often be ignored. Always look for evidence behind ‘green’ claims.

You might have heard businesses making a net zero commitment by a specific date. This means an organisation has calculated their emissions and will use the process of reduce emissions, choose renewable options to further reduce emissions, then offset their footprint, to bring their total emissions to zero. Some companies are going a step further, setting Net Zero commitments to reduce their emissions by 90-100% and refusing to use offsetting. Look for details about an organisation’s Net Zero commitment and how much they will cut their footprint by.

Some companies pay for plastic waste that’s been scooped out of the ocean, to use in their products. However, if a product claims to be ‘ocean plastic’ it does not mean it has ever been in the ocean. Some companies use ‘ocean-bound’ plastic instead which is waste plastic argued to be destined for the ocean.

Oxo-degradable plastics are made from standard plastic (from fossil fuels), with an additive that attracts bacteria to speed up the degrading process. These items don’t fully disappear, instead they break down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually leaving microplastics behind which is a big problem for our oceans and can end up in our food system.

This is popping up more as the popularity, and profitability, of vegan products rises. There’s no standard definition. Often it means that the product is based on plants rather than animal derivatives, but when you see it on a bottle of moisturiser it makes you wonder why the moisturiser contained animal products before.

Plastic free can genuinely be plastic free, sometimes used to promote products which would not usually be made from plastic, or are obviously not made from plastic, such as ‘plastic-free wooden pegs’. It can also be used to highlight products that don’t appear to contain plastic but had hidden plastics in them, such as ‘plastic-free teabags’.

Some companies use the word ‘recycled’ but when you read the small print, they’re made from just 10 or 20% recycled material. There are two types of recycled content:

Pre-consumer - rubbish that hasn’t been used, usually waste created during manufacturing like fabric offcuts, plastic pieces, wood shavings etc.

Post-consumer - rubbish created once people have used the item, all the stuff we throw away or recycle.

A company can prove that their item is recyclable but whether you can recycle it as a consumer entirely depends on where you are and who is collecting the bin you’re about to put that ‘recyclable’ product into.

Technically anything is reusable if you don’t throw it away! This is used to highlight items that have been designed for reuse, like reusable coffee cups.

Sustainable should consider three elements (social, environmental and economic), but there’s no requirement to do so before making a claim of being sustainable. Some companies will claim their products are sustainable because they’re reusable or contain recycled content.