The EU Green Claims Directive: what it means for supplement and cosmetic marketing

"Eco-friendly." "Climate neutral." "Sustainable formula." Environmental claims have become a standard part of supplement and cosmetic marketing — and they are exactly what the EU is now cracking down on. A wave of anti-greenwashing rules is changing what brands can say about sustainability, and the era of the unsubstantiated green badge is ending.

The direction of travel

The EU has been moving to stop misleading environmental claims through several connected initiatives — including measures to empower consumers against greenwashing and the proposed Green Claims Directive aimed specifically at the substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims. The common thread is simple: if you make a green claim, you must be able to prove it.

This area is evolving and the precise obligations and timing are still settling. Treat this as an orientation to the direction of regulation, and confirm the current requirements before relying on any specific environmental claim.

What counts as a green claim

An environmental claim is any message that suggests a product is better for the environment — about its ingredients, its packaging, its carbon footprint, its recyclability, or the product as a whole. The scrutiny applies whether the claim is a sentence on the pack, a logo, or a line in an ad.

Vague, blanket terms are the main target. Words like eco, green, or environmentally friendly used without specifics and without evidence are precisely the kind of claim the rules are designed to curb.

Substantiation is the core requirement

The heart of the approach is substantiation. An explicit environmental claim should be supported by evidence — and the evidence should be robust, relevant, and available. A brand should be able to show the basis for the claim, not simply assert it.

This reframes a green claim from a marketing decision into an evidence-backed statement, much as a health claim is. You start from what you can prove about the product, and the claim follows — not the other way around.

The parallel with health claims

For supplement and cosmetic brands, this logic is familiar. EU health and nutrition claims already work on the principle that a claim has to be authorised and supported by the product's actual composition. Environmental claims are heading the same way: a claim tied to evidence rather than to creative copywriting.

Brands that already treat claims as something earned from product data — rather than written first and justified later — are well placed for the environmental version of the same discipline.

Where the evidence lives

Substantiating an environmental claim depends on data about the product: what is in it, where ingredients come from, how it is packaged, and the basis for any footprint or sustainability assertion. Much of this connects back to ingredient sourcing and composition — the same structured information that underpins compliance and labeling.

When that data is scattered, an environmental claim is hard to defend if challenged. When it is structured and traceable, the brand can show the basis for what it says.

Practical steps for brands

The sensible response is not to abandon sustainability messaging but to make it precise and provable. Replace vague badges with specific, evidenced statements. Keep the data behind each claim — sourcing, composition, packaging — organised and current. And apply the same gate to a green claim that you would to a health claim: can we support this, with evidence, for this exact product?

Claims that pass that gate are both more compliant and, increasingly, more credible to consumers who have grown sceptical of empty green labels.

The takeaway

The EU is closing the door on unsubstantiated environmental claims. For supplements and cosmetics, the future of sustainability marketing is the same as the present of health-claim marketing: claims have to be specific and backed by evidence rooted in real product data. Brands that hold their sourcing and composition as structured, traceable information can keep making green claims — the defensible kind.

Lemoniq keeps your composition and ingredient sourcing as structured, traceable data, so the claims you make — health and increasingly environmental — start from what you can actually prove about the product. We solve this exact problem. See how it works