EU green claims rules: rewrite "eco-friendly" into a fact

Read your homepage the way a competitor's lawyer would. "Eco-friendly cleaning". "A green stay in the Douro". "Climate-neutral delivery". Since 27 September 2026, each of those lines is a green claim the EU treats as misleading unless you can prove it, and the rules cover the website you published years ago just as much as the one you launched last week.

The law is Directive (EU) 2024/825, known as EmpCo. Most of the coverage is written for brands with packaging and product catalogues. This guide is for the owner of a small service business whose green claims sit in a hero line, an About page and a meta description, and who wants to keep saying what is true about the business without the risk.

TL;DR: Since 27 September 2026, EU law bans generic green claims such as "eco-friendly", "green" and "climate friendly" unless you can prove recognised excellent environmental performance. Offset-based "climate neutral" claims and self-made eco badges are banned too. Website text has no grace period. The fix is to replace each adjective with the specific fact behind it, on the same page.

Which green claims did the EU ban on 27 September 2026?

The EmpCo directive adds green claims to the list of commercial practices that are banned in all circumstances, with no case-by-case test. Four of the new bans are the ones a small business website trips over.

• Generic words. The directive's own examples are "environmentally friendly", "eco-friendly", "green", "nature's friend", "ecological", "environmentally correct", "climate friendly", "gentle on the environment", "carbon friendly", "energy efficient", "biodegradable" and "biobased". They are banned unless you can demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance, which in practice means the EU Ecolabel or an officially recognised ecolabel scheme.
• Offsetting. "Climate neutral", "CO2 neutral certified", "carbon positive", "climate net zero", "climate compensated", "reduced climate impact" and "limited CO2 footprint" are banned when they rest on buying offsets outside your own value chain. No amount of explanation saves them.
• Home-made labels. A leaf badge from your website theme, or a "Green Choice" seal you designed yourself, is banned unless it comes from a certification scheme with independent checks or from a public authority.
• The part sold as the whole. A claim about the whole business that is only true of one part of it.

The European Commission's reason is on the record: a 2020 Commission study found that 53.3% of the green claims it examined were vague, misleading or unfounded, and 40% were completely unsubstantiated.

Does it apply to a small service business website?

Yes, and size is no defence. The rules apply to every business that talks to consumers in the EU, with no turnover or headcount threshold, which is the main difference from the large-company sustainability reporting rules many owners have heard of. They also cover services as well as goods: the directive's examples of banned offset claims apply to "a product, either a good or service".

The website matters more than anything else you publish. Printed stock got some sympathy: the Commission's FAQ and national consumer authorities ask for proportionate enforcement on goods already produced, such as stickers over old packaging. Online claims got none. They have had to comply since the day the rules applied, because a web page can be edited in an afternoon.

Enforcement in most countries will start with a letter, from a competitor, a consumer association or a regulator, so the practical question is whether you can answer that letter with a fact.

Where green claims hide on a business website

A small business rarely writes "eco-friendly" on purpose all over its site. It writes it once in a hero line and the phrase spreads. These are the places to search, in order of how often they get forgotten:

1. Page titles and meta descriptions. The words Google shows under your link are advertising too, and they are usually written once and never read again.
2. Image alt text and file names. "eco-friendly-office.jpg" is invisible to visitors and very visible to anyone scanning your HTML.
3. Icons and badges. The directive says a claim in words, combined with colours or images, can be a generic claim. A leaf icon next to "our approach" counts.
4. The About page and footer. "A sustainable business from day one" usually lives here.
5. Supplier text. If you pasted a supplier's description of a product you use, the claim is now yours.
6. Everywhere outside the site. Your Google Business Profile description, social bios and booking platform listings carry the same sentence.

Use your browser's find (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) for "eco", "green", "sustainab", "climate", "carbon", "neutral", "natural" and "planet" on every page. Then run a site:yourdomain.com eco search on Google to catch the pages you forgot existed. Brand names are in scope too: the Commission's FAQ says a business name containing "green" or "eco" counts if customers would read it as an environmental promise.

How to rewrite "eco-friendly" into a claim you can prove

The rule that makes this fixable is in the directive itself. A claim stops being generic when its specification is given "in clear and prominent terms on the same medium". The directive's own example: "climate-friendly packaging" is a banned generic claim, while "100% of energy used to produce this packaging comes from renewable sources" is a specific one.

So every green adjective on your site is a placeholder for a fact. Some illustrative rewrites for service businesses, each one only usable if it is true and you can show the evidence:

The rewrite is better copy as well as safer copy. "Eco-friendly" is what every competitor already says. "Cargo bike inside the city centre" is a reason to pick you.

I hold my own writing to this. When we built Vell, a fictional Copenhagen clothing label on our concept sites, the collection page never says "sustainable". It says "eleven in recycled wool, nine in organic cotton, four in dead-stock silk", and names the mill near Porto that weaves the cotton. Read again against these rules, one line still needs evidence: "repaired free for life" is a repair promise, and a real label would need written repair terms behind it before publishing it.

What can you still say about the environment?

A lot. The directive bans vagueness, and it leaves room for anything specific and true.

• Specific facts about one named part of the business, like the rewrites above, kept on the same page as the claim.
• Recognised labels you actually hold, such as the EU Ecolabel, with the scheme named next to the claim.
• What you fund, described as funding. The directive says businesses can still advertise investments in environmental projects, including carbon credit projects, as long as they are described accurately and kept separate from a claim that your service itself is neutral. "We fund a reforestation project in the Serra da Estrela" survives. "Carbon-neutral stays" does not.
• Future targets with a plan. "Net zero by 2030" needs a public, detailed implementation plan and regular checks by an independent expert. For most small businesses that plan does not exist yet, so the target belongs in the internal to-do list, not on the homepage.

Keep the evidence in one folder: the certificate with its number and expiry, the energy bill, the supplier's invoice. If a letter arrives, the answer is a link to that folder.

Frequently asked questions

Is the word "sustainable" banned?

"Sustainable" is not on the directive's list of examples, but it is riskier than "eco-friendly". The directive says words like "conscious", "sustainable" and "responsible" also cover social characteristics, so even an EU Ecolabel cannot justify them on its own. Replace them with the specific fact.

Do the rules apply to businesses that only sell to other businesses?

The EmpCo directive amends EU consumer law, so it targets communication aimed at consumers. Some member states extend similar rules to business-to-business advertising through national law, and general misleading-advertising rules still apply. A website that both consumers and companies read should follow the consumer standard.

Is there a transition period for old web pages?

There is no transition period for website text. The Commission's FAQ and consumer authorities ask for proportionate treatment of goods and packaging already produced before 27 September 2026, but online claims had to be corrected from that date, because they can be edited immediately.

What is the Green Claims Directive, and is it the same law?

The Green Claims Directive is a separate EU proposal on how businesses must substantiate environmental claims, and the Commission still lists it as pending. EmpCo is the law that already applies. When people say the EU banned "eco-friendly", they mean EmpCo.

What to do this week

Search your site for the eight words above, list every hit with its page, and decide each one: keep it with evidence, rewrite it to the fact, or delete it. Do the meta descriptions and the Google Business Profile in the same pass, because they are the copies nobody rereads. Then write down the date you checked, so the record exists before anyone asks for it.

This is copy work more than legal work, and it is the kind we do on every site we maintain: concrete claims, evidence on file, pages that get reread. If your site needs that pass and you would rather not do it alone, book a 30-minute call and we will go through it together, or see what a maintained site includes on the Foundation plan.

For a claim you are unsure about, or anything in a regulated sector, check it with a lawyer who knows your country's transposition of the directive.