Suspect ‘Recyclable’ Claims in Focus as FTC Updates Green Guides

Environmental experts and state officials on Tuesday urged the Federal Trade Commission to reel in when companies can use the term “recyclable” on product labels and marketing.

The Federal Trade Commission held a forum on recyclable advertising claims as part of a potential update of its Green Guides, guidelines that shape how far companies can go in portraying themselves and their products as environmentally friendly. The FTC is reviewing public comments it solicited late last year, but hasn’t committed to any Green Guide changes.

California Deputy Attorney General Raissa Lerner said the FTC guides should be “more specific and clear” to take the onus off the consumer in vetting “recyclable” claims. “It has to be on the marketer or manufacturer making the claim,” she said at the conference, called “Talking Trash at the FTC.”

“Consumers just aren’t going to do a research project; you can’t just put the research project onto them,” Lerner said.

Call for Disclaimer

The Green Guides are being reviewed for the first time in more than a decade. The guides currently state that marketers are making unqualified recyclable claims when recycling facilities are available to less than 60% of consumers or communities where the product is sold—a standard that some questioned at the FTC event.

Lerner suggested a potential disclaimer stating that not all of the items will actually be recyclable. The FTC should recognize that “chasing arrows at this point are unqualified claims,” she said, referring to the universal recycling symbol with three green arrows.

Several industry and environmental experts referenced recent consumer research they’ve conducted to help the FTC evaluate its guides. A January study by Consumer Reports found that 70% of respondents buy an available product because it was advertised as environmentally safe, said Quinta Warren, the nonprofit group’s associate director of sustainablility policy.

“We don’t want consumers to be buying a product thinking that it’s recyclable when it actually isn’t,” Warren said. “Labels matter.”

The event’s moderator, FTC enforcement attorney Julia Solomon Ensor, asked the experts whether the regulator should impose mandatory rules, instead of the current advisory guidelines. The FTC posed the same question last year in its notice seeking public comment on its review of the Green Guides. Such a step would give the commission new powers to rein in misleading green marketing.

While the FTC hasn’t brought many enforcement actions over recyclable claims, some states have stepped in and adopted the guides as their own laws, said Peter Blair, policy director at the nonprofit group Just Zero.

“There’s widespread consumer confusion about what is recyclable. We’re a bunch of experts in this room and even we’re not agreeing,” he said.

“It would go a long way to have a clear standard,” Blair said, calling for “federal regulations that companies have to achieve that you have to meet to earn the ability to claim your product is recyclable.”