Can you back up your environmental claims?

Written by Sasisa Singarasah Bylov, Head of Communications & PR

From 27 September, you can no longer call your products “eco-friendly” unless you can prove it

The Danish Consumer Ombudsman published a press release 01 July 2026 confirming changes to the Danish Marketing Practices Act that take effect on 27 September 2026. For companies that make environmental claims about their products, this is not a background regulatory update. It is a concrete deadline with direct consequences for what you are allowed to say.

The amendment implements the EU’s ECGT Directive (Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition) and expands the list of marketing practices that are always considered misleading. From September, this applies specifically to environmental claims.

What changes

The Consumer Ombudsman notes that the new rules do not deviate significantly from current enforcement practice. But there is an important distinction: what previously required a complaint and a case-by-case assessment is now written directly into the law. That lowers the threshold for enforcement considerably.

From 27 September, four types of marketing become automatically unlawful under the Marketing Practices Act:

• Using a sustainability label that is not based on a recognised certification scheme or established by a public authority. A self-designed “eco” badge on your packaging falls into this category.
• Making generic environmental claims such as “eco-friendly”, “climate-friendly”, “green”, or “kind to the environment” without being able to document recognised outstanding environmental performance.
• Making an environmental claim about your whole product or your entire company when it only covers one specific aspect.
• Claiming a product is carbon neutral or climate compensated if the offsetting occurs outside the product’s value chain. Carbon credits purchased externally do not make the claim lawful.

Two further additions to §5 of the Marketing Practices Act are also worth noting. Under §5, no. 12, future environmental claims now require clear, publicly available and verifiable commitments, with measurable and time-bound targets subject to regular independent third-party review. Under §5, no. 13, benefits that are irrelevant to the product or do not follow from anything concrete about it may no longer be highlighted.

What this means in practice

Companies that currently use broad environmental language as a kind of goodwill signal will need to examine whether those statements can stand on their own merits. Not as internal policy, but as documented, verifiable fact.

This is where LCA documentation becomes directly relevant. Not because a lifecycle assessment gives you permission to write “green” on the box. It does not. But because it gives you the specific figures needed to formulate claims that hold up: precise, product-level data that can be independently checked.

It is also what allows you to respond when a customer or procurement team asks.

A date to keep in mind

The Consumer Ombudsman is currently revising its 2024 guidance on environmental marketing. The updated version is expected in late August 2026, roughly a month before the rules come into force. That is a narrow window to review existing communications.

It is worth noting that the rules apply to products and packaging already produced before 27 September. There is no transitional period that shields existing stock from the new requirements.

The time before the deadline is well spent examining which environmental claims you currently make, whether they are substantiated, and what it would take to document them properly. For most companies, the bigger change is not in what they do. It is in being able to show it.

Source: Consumer Ombudsman press release, 1 July 2026  New rules on environmental marketing from September 2026