.png "Environmental Claims After EmpCo: Say What You Did, Not What You Cancelled")
For most of the last decade, the safest line in a sustainability report was "we are carbon neutral." From 27 September 2026, in the EU, it becomes one of the riskiest.
That is the date the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive (EmpCo, Directive 2024/825) starts to apply. It changes what marketing and communications teams can put on a product, a website, or a campaign. And it lands at a telling moment: the more detailed Green Claims Directive, once expected to sit alongside it, has been pulled. The European Commission announced its intention to withdraw that proposal in June 2025. EmpCo is now the main anti-greenwashing rulebook, and it is already law.
Here is what actually changes, and how to prepare without losing your nerve or your nature program.
Two shifts matter most for anyone who writes campaign copy.
First, generic environmental labels lose their free pass. Words like "green," "eco-friendly," or "climate-conscious" can no longer be used unless you can back them with recognised, checkable evidence.
Second, and this is the big one: you can no longer call a product or company "carbon neutral," "CO2 neutral," "climate positive," or "carbon zero" when that claim rests on offsetting, including buying credits or planting trees to cancel out emissions. This holds even when the offset projects are certified.
Note what is not banned. Offsetting itself is allowed. Supporting reforestation is allowed. Describing what you fund is allowed. What is banned is dressing that support up as neutrality: telling people a problem has been cancelled out when it has only been counterbalanced on paper. Penalties are real, too. Serious violations may, depending on national implementation and particularly in the context of EU-wide coordinated enforcement actions, be subject to fines of up to 4% of a company's annual turnover in the Member State(s) concerned.
It is tempting to read EmpCo as a loss. For years, the tree became a shortcut: plant enough of them, the thinking went, and the problem was solved. That was never quite true, and most people in the field knew it.
What EmpCo removes is not nature from marketing. It removes the neutrality claim that nature was being asked to carry. What is left is more honest, and, we would argue, more persuasive: not "we cancelled it out," but "here is what we actually did."
The appetite for that action has not gone anywhere. In the Arbor Day Foundation's 2025 Canopy Report, produced with The Harris Poll, 85% of Americans said companies should actively support tree planting or reforestation, and around two-thirds said they are more likely to support a business working to reduce or offset its footprint. People still want the action. They are simply going to expect it described honestly.
The cleanest way to prepare is to sort every sustainability line you use into one of two buckets.
A status claim describes what you supposedly are: "carbon neutral," "climate positive," "net zero product." It is a promise you then have to defend, and after September, several versions of it are off the table.
An action claim describes what you did: "for every survey completed, we plant a tree," "we funded the restoration of 40 hectares this year," "we cut operational emissions since 2023 and support reforestation on top." It is specific, it points to something real, and it can be kept audit-ready.
One of these survives EmpCo. The other does not. The move that protects you legally is also the move that reads as more credible to a sceptical audience: claim what you did, attach it to a concrete business action, and keep the evidence checkable.
1. Inventory your claims. Pull every environmental line from your website, packaging, decks, and ad copy into one list. Tag each as status or action.
2. Retire or rebuild the status claims. Anything resting on offsetting-as-neutrality gets cut or rewritten. "Carbon-neutral shipping" becomes, for example, "we fund tree planting to match every order, and here is the number."
3. Make the action claims specific. Replace adjectives with quantities, places, and dates. Vague good intentions are exactly what EmpCo targets.
4. Keep the receipts. For every action claim, hold the underlying data where a regulator, journalist, or customer could check it. Audit-ready beats impressive.
This is the model we have built around from the start. We help companies attach a concrete environmental action to a normal business moment: a sale, a signed contract, a completed survey, a new hire, a delivered order. Every action funds real projects, and the numbers behind them stay checkable rather than abstract.
That structure was designed for credibility. It happens to be well suited to the world EmpCo creates, because an action claim ("for every X, we plant a tree") is specific and substantiated in a way a neutrality label never was.
Want to pressure-test your current sustainability claims before September? Talk to our team. We will help you turn status claims into action claims your legal team can stand behind.
From Impact Hero with love,
Dr. Hannah Schragmann
Chief Transparency Officer, Impact Hero
SOURCES:
- EmpCo application date (27 Sept 2026), offsetting/neutrality ban, generic-claim rules: EU Directive 2024/825; industry summaries (GS1 Europe, Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, CSR Tools).
- Green Claims Directive withdrawal (June 2025): Latham & Watkins; Gorrissen Federspiel.
- Fine wording (up to 4% of annual turnover): per Hannah, tied to national implementation and EU-wide coordinated enforcement actions.
- 85% of Americans / roughly two-thirds consumer sentiment: Arbor Day Foundation 2025 Canopy Report with The Harris Poll (US respondents).
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