UNSUBSTANTIATED claims about the eco-friendliness or sustainability of consumer products were the most common form of greenwashing in Singapore, according to a study by the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School.

After selecting up to 20 products from the top 100 most visited e-commerce sites in Singapore in October 2022, researchers from NUS’ Centre for Governance and Sustainability (CGS) found that 51 per cent of product claims were unsupported.

The use of technical jargon was the second most common form of greenwashing, at about 14 per cent.

The sampled websites spanned 10 consumer categories, including electronics and physical media, as well as furniture and appliances.

Businesses are considered to have made an unsubstantiated environmental claim about their product if no sufficient elaboration or evidence is provided on how the materials used are natural, sustainable or eco-friendly, or if there is no elaboration or evidence of eco-friendly attributes in the product description.

What was common among the sampled products were claims that these items were made of recycled materials, without specifying how much of it is recycled content.

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“This may be misleading, as products that are composed of 1 per cent recycled content technically still contain some recycled content and can be marketed as such. To substantiate claims, businesses should specify what recycled material is used, whether it is post-consumer or post-industrial recycled content and/or how much or which components of the product are made with the recycled content,” read the report, which was published on Thursday (Nov 16).

Businesses also inaccurately conflate “natural” materials with sustainability. However, natural resources can be unsustainably sourced and processed in a way that undermines their biodegradability. To advertise “natural” products as sustainable, businesses should be transparent regarding the sourcing and processing of the raw material, and the product’s end of life, the study stated.

As for the use of technical jargon, the report found that these products with technical jargon tend to fall under the furniture and appliances, consumer electronics, as well as fashion and beauty categories.

These items featured technical language that do not provide understandable information, or misleadingly label certain materials as sustainable, thereby capitalising on consumers’ lack of technical knowledge.

Examples found in this study include using technical terms for specific types of petroleum-based plastics, such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) or ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), and labelling them as environmentally friendly without further elaboration. Some labels that are not well-understood by the everyday consumer include “made from sustainable ABS material” and “made of eco-friendly EVA”.

The report said: “Businesses should be encouraged as much as possible to use environmental terms that are easily understood by most people... Businesses should not label materials as environmentally friendly without justification or elaborating on why the material is better for the environment compared to other materials.”

To guard against greenwashing, the study recommended that regulators introduce regulations that explicitly spell out penalties related to greenwashing infringements, similar to what the United Kingdom and United States have done.

In Singapore, current laws and statutes that are relevant to greenwashing include the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act 2003 and the Misrepresentation Act 1967.

The consumer protection law allows consumers to take legal action against companies for engaging in unfair practices in relation to consumer transactions – such as false or misleading claims, while the Misrepresentation Act lets a person who has entered a contract based on a negligent misrepresentation claim damages against the other contracting party.

The Singapore Code of Advertising Practice also provides industry self-regulation guidelines requiring all advertisements to be legal, decent, honest, and truthful. 

However, these laws and regulations still do not explicitly cover or define greenwashing.

“Thus, the burden is often on consumers to determine what constitutes greenwashing... There may be a need to update and clarify the existing laws and regulations in Singapore to protect consumers and help businesses avoid greenwashing,” the report stated.