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Marketing that makes products look greener than they truly are is the breeding ground for greenwashing. As the EU tightens rules on sustainability claims and product transparency, companies are being pushed to replace glossy promises with hard, traceable proof.
This guide will explore the preventive measures, but before proceeding, let’s have a look at What Greenwashing is:
Greenwashing is when a company makes vague, exaggerated, or misleading environmental claims to appear more sustainable than it really is.
Common patterns regulators see a lot:
Because greenwashing misleads consumers and punishes honest businesses that spend money to actually reduce impact, the EU is treating it as a consumer-protection and internal-market problem. If shoppers can’t trust claims, the market for genuinely greener products doesn’t work.
A big step is Directive (EU) 2024/825 (“Empowering consumers for the green transition”), which updates EU consumer rules to target unfair/misleading environmental marketing and certain problematic claim-types.
Directive 2024/825 is in force and requires EU countries to implement changes into national law by setting deadlines. It tightens rules around how environmental claims and labels can be presented to consumers.
The proposed Green Claims Directive is designed to require that explicit environmental claims are substantiated and verified (a “show your evidence” regime). The European Parliament adopted its position in March 2024, and the Council adopted a general approach in June 2024.
But negotiations have been rocky: talks were reportedly halted in June 2025 amid controversy over burdens on smaller firms, and the Commission later clarified it hadn’t formally withdrawn it.
As consumer demand for ethical shopping grows, brands are under pressure to prove their sustainability credentials, but many claims don’t hold up to scrutiny. This type of misleading “green” messaging isn’t just unethical; it’s also increasingly risky, as stricter EU regulations like ESPR and legal enforcement make it harder for companies to market sustainability without solid evidence.
Read our blog on a complete guide: Everything You Need to Know About Digital Product Passport ESPR
Greenwashing is becoming a critical liability for companies as green claims face mounting scrutiny from regulators, investors, and consumers alike. With the rise of ESG reporting standards, upcoming legislation such as the EU Green Claims Directive, and enforcement actions under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, sustainability is no longer a soft branding tool; it's a compliance issue.
EU Green Claims Directive
A green claim (under the EU Green Claims Directive) is any time a company tells customers that its product or brand is “good for the environment” or “less harmful to the environment,” whether that’s said in text, shown with a logo/label, or implied through marketing (like “eco-friendly,” “carbon neutral,” or “made from recycled materials”).
If a business makes environmental claims that aren't true or can't be proven, it risks damaging its reputation, facing legal trouble, and losing the trust of all parties involved. As people expect more and more solid, data-backed proof, companies that can't back up their sustainability talk are going to fall behind or, even worse, get called out.
A Digital Product Passport (DPP) includes details such as its materials, manufacturing location and process, repair and recycling instructions, and environmental impact. The goal of a DPP is to provide accessible and reliable information to encourage product longevity, reusability, and reduce environmental damage, benefiting businesses, regulators, and consumers.
Once implemented through the ESPR, the DPP will be mandatory for several product categories sold in the EU. What makes it powerful is its ability to tie sustainability claims directly to source data. That connection limits room for greenwashing and helps businesses meet growing disclosure requirements with confidence.
DPPs are crucial in preventing greenwashing by offering several advantages:
Instead of relying on generic marketing claims, the DPP includes specific details: material origins, carbon footprint, and end-of-life instructions. Get a real-time walkthrough of our DPP platform—book a demo.
As part of the ESPR, DPPs are built to support alignment with EU sustainability legislation, including the Green Claims Directive.
Sustainability messaging can be traced back to verifiable data, reducing the risk of vague or exaggerated environmental claims.
Manufacturers, retailers, and consumers access the same dataset, minimising inconsistencies and selective reporting.
Enables brands to meet requirements under the Green Claims Directive and other EU regulatory frameworks focused on truthful environmental labeling.
Transparent disclosure builds trust with stakeholders, investors, and end users, making green marketing more accountable and resilient.
Companies taking Digital Product Passport (DPP) services from providers like DigiProd Pass to build consumer trust by turning “trust me” sustainability marketing into “check it yourself” transparency, accessible at the point of sale (often via a QR code/data carrier) and backed by structured product data required under EU rules like the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).
Instead of broad statements like “eco-friendly,” a DPP is meant to provide standardised, product-specific information—a kind of “digital ID card” for products, components, and materials—so shoppers can see what’s actually in the product and what that implies.
Trust effect: fewer misleading impressions, more evidence-based decisions.
DPPs help connect claims to traceable data (materials, origins, compliance info, lifecycle info). When brands know consumers (and regulators) can verify details, there’s less room for hand-wavy environmental marketing.
Trust effect: “show your workings” discourages exaggeration.
A big trust killer is when every company uses different definitions (“sustainable,” “responsible,” etc.). The DPP approach pushes toward consistent, accessible, standardised product info, which makes it easier for consumers to compare products fairly.
Trust effect: less confusion, fewer misleading comparisons.
DPPs aren’t only for purchase decisions. They’re designed to support circularity—repair, reuse, parts replacement, and end-of-life handling—by making key product info available to the right people (including consumers and downstream actors).
Trust effect: consumers feel safer buying products they can maintain, resell, and recycle properly.
The EU is already pushing “passport-like” transparency in specific sectors (notably batteries), where consumers and others can access sustainability/usage/lifecycle-related information through a digital record.
Trust effect: high-impact products get higher accountability.
A good DPP experience typically gives:
This “layered transparency” is what converts data into trust—not the existence of a PDF nobody reads.
When your product data is structured and accessible, you can credibly say things like:
That credibility is exactly what EU policy is trying to reward under ESPR’s DPP push.
End Note
The EU’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) represents a significant step forward in how sustainability is demonstrated: it replaces vague “green” messaging with structured, accessible product data that can be verified across the entire value chain. Under the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), the DPP acts like a digital identity card for products, storing relevant information to support sustainability, circularity, and legal compliance.
Because it shifts claims from “marketing statements” to traceable, data-backed facts, making it easier to substantiate what’s true, clarify scope, and show evidence to auditors/authorities.
No. A DPP is infrastructure for proof, but brands still need to ensure claims are accurate, clearly scoped, and properly substantiated under rules like the EU Green Claims framework.
No. ESPR sets the framework, and sector requirements will be detailed through follow-up measures (delegated acts/working plans).
Event-based traceability standards like GS1 EPCIS (Electronic Product Code Information Services) are widely used to share “what/where/when/why” supply chain events in a consistent way, useful when multiple partners contribute data.
EPCIS is intended to be used with GS1 CBV (Core Business Vocabulary), which standardizes the allowed values (e.g., event types/business steps) so data is consistent across companies.
If your Digital Product Passport (DPP) needs verifiable “proof trails,” EPCIS is one of the most common ways to structure the underlying traceability evidence (events + custody history) in an interoperable way.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2005/29/oj/eng
https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/sites/default/files/2024-03/1qp5rxiZ-CEPS-InDepthAnalysis-2024-05_Implementing-the-EU-digital-battery-passport.pdf
https://commission.europa.eu/energy-climate-change-environment/standards-tools-and-labels/products-labelling-rules-and-requirements/ecodesign-sustainable-products-regulation_en
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/825/oj/eng
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