It just got a whole lot harder for fashion, beauty, and retail brands to make vague or unsubstantiated environmental promises, thanks to a landmark European Union regulation known as the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, or EmpCo. As shoppers increasingly demand authenticity and transparency in their purchasing habits, this sweeping regulatory shift aims to eliminate the widespread industry practice of greenwashing. But what does the new directive actually mean for everyday consumers striving to make more informed shopping choices, and how are the brands they buy from being forced to adapt to a much stricter legal landscape?
To understand the practical implications of these sweeping changes, we spoke with Sandra Capponi, co-founder of Good On You, a leading platform for transparent
sustainability ratings. Having spent over a decade at the helm of the organization alongside co-founder Gordon Renouf, Capponi has witnessed massive shifts in how the retail industry approaches environmental and social responsibility. From the deep commitments and surging corporate interest seen throughout the 2010s to more recent industry backtracking on climate targets and the deprioritisation of critical environmental goals, the landscape has been turbulent. The introduction of the EU’s EmpCo directive this September marks yet another critical turning point, tightening the rules on how brands and retailers communicate green claims and demanding rigorous evidence to back them up.
While the directive appears complex at first glance, Capponi has spent months dissecting its finer details. We asked her to break down what everyday shoppers and major brands really need to understand about the new rules. The core takeaway from the legislation aligns precisely with what Good On You has championed since its inception: the necessity of telling the truth, being specific, and holding verifiable evidence to support every claim.
Understanding EmpCo and Its Core Objectives
At its core, EmpCo is a new set of EU rules designed to guide sustainability claims and communications directed at consumers, making greenwashing significantly harder while smoothing the path toward informed purchasing decisions. Short for the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, the regulation raises the bar on environmental communications. Crucially, it also strengthens existing consumer protection laws regarding misleading claims and commercial practices, extending oversight to encompass the social characteristics of products and brands.
The directive reinforces principles that advocates like Good On You have long promoted: requiring brands to be explicit about their claims, backing those assertions up with solid evidence, and making comprehensive supporting information easily accessible. Now that these regulatory expectations have been codified, businesses no longer have any acceptable excuses for a lack of transparency.
The implementation of the directive is already underway across the continent. Many EU member states, including major economies like Germany and Italy, have already integrated the directive into their national laws. As individual countries continue to work through how these rules apply in everyday commercial practice, further regulatory guidance is expected to emerge over time.
The Real-World Impact on Consumers and Brands
For everyday consumers, the EmpCo directive translates to much stronger assurances that the environmental and social claims they encounter in the marketplace are reliable. This reliability will empower shoppers to make genuinely informed choices about which brands to support and which to avoid. As brands and retailers race to bring their marketing and communications into compliance, shoppers can expect to see much clearer, more detailed claims. Vague, catch-all marketing terminology such as "eco-friendly" or "positive choice" will essentially become a thing of the past.
For brands and retailers, EmpCo means the absolute end of broad, generic green claims unless the company can demonstrate a recognized, exceptional level of environmental performance. Every statement moving forward must be specific and supported by concrete proof, which can take the form of verifiable evidence or compliance with a recognized sustainability label scheme.
Retailers, including major e-commerce platforms that help consumers compare different brands and products, must also adapt. They are now required to ensure they use precise sustainability categorizations and filters, provide clear definitions explaining what those filters mean, and make detailed supporting information available either right next to the claim or within a single click. Furthermore, the rules governing sustainability labels have fundamentally changed. Moving forward, any sustainability label must be backed by a formal certification scheme or a public authority.
Navigating Sustainability Comparisons and Independent Ratings
While any regulatory measure that forces brands to provide more reliable information is inherently positive for consumers, navigating the sheer variety of sustainability labels, claims, and data can still prove challenging. Making meaningful, direct comparisons between different brands remains a complex task for the average shopper.
When consumers want to compare actions across the key issues they care about most, independent tools provide essential clarity. Good On You’s ratings, for example, offer a consistent, independent assessment rooted in public evidence, utilizing a methodology that is regularly updated and peer-reviewed. Multi-brand retailers and digital shopping platforms also hold a vital responsibility in making this information accessible and useful for their customers, prompting organizations like Good On You to evolve their guidance to help these platforms meet the new standards.
How Good On You Prepared for the Regulatory Shift
From its very beginning, the mission of Good On You has centered on making sustainability information transparent, accessible, and worthy of consumer trust. The organization’s extensive preparation for the arrival of EmpCo built directly upon this foundational ethos.
Anticipating the regulatory changes over the past year, the team focused heavily on ensuring their operations met the stringent transparency requirements mandated for sustainability label schemes under EmpCo. This involved evolving internal ratings processes and governance structures to further protect the independence and trustworthiness of the ratings. Good On You formalized the complete autonomy of its rating team, published its official sustainability label scheme rules, and appointed a new independent monitoring body known as Odonata.
As a result of these adjustments, the platform’s top ratings—"Good," representing a four-out-of-five score, and "Great," representing a five-out-of-five score—along with the Rated Good On You Mark, can now be officially utilized as compliant sustainability labels. Furthermore, the platform’s comprehensive ratings data can actively support compliant environmental and social claims made by brands and retailers.
A distinctive aspect of Good On You’s model is its financial accessibility. While the vast majority of sustainability label schemes require brands to pay significant fees to undergo an assessment, Good On You does not. The platform rates retail brands based on public evidence, meaning brands are not required to opt in or pay to be evaluated. This open approach prevents financial barriers from restricting access to comparative information and ensures absolute accountability to consumers. Crucially, it also removes the financial hurdles of certification for smaller, independent brands that are often leading the charge on sustainability, connecting these lesser-known pioneers directly with conscious shoppers.
The Nuance of Claim Substantiation
While the use of formal certification schemes and officially backed sustainability labels represents one primary pathway for brands to substantiate their claims, it is not the only method permitted under the new rules. Brands retain the ability to make specific, fact-based claims provided those assertions can be thoroughly substantiated with verifiable evidence.
While this represents a technical nuance within the legislation, many brands are currently deferring primarily to established certification schemes. Industry observers note a critical need to ensure this trend does not inadvertently create an exclusionary environment where only large corporations with deep financial reserves can afford certification while smaller innovators are sidelined. Smaller brands often lead the way on environmental and ethical issues, and the regulatory framework must preserve their ability to communicate with confidence. Ultimately, the process returns to core principles: telling the truth, maintaining specificity, and possessing the evidence to back it up. These are the exact standards that Good On You and other advocates have urged the fashion and retail industries to adopt for over a decade.
Addressing the Threat of Greenhushing
Despite the clear consumer benefits of EmpCo, industry experts acknowledge a lingering risk: that brands might pull back even further from public sustainability communications to avoid regulatory scrutiny, inadvertently fueling a rise in "greenhushing." Recent data from Good On You indicates that the fashion and retail sectors still have a remarkably long way to go regarding transparency on the critical sustainability issues that matter most to the public.
In recent years, a noticeable surge in greenhushing has taken hold across the corporate landscape. As various regulations developed worldwide, many businesses grew increasingly uncertain about what statements they could safely make without inviting legal repercussions. While EmpCo is still in its early stages and some forward-thinking businesses are already ahead of the curve, the enforcement of these rules places the responsibility firmly on brands and retailers to abandon past excuses and embrace transparent communication.
Enforcement and the High Cost of Non-Compliance
For businesses caught making non-compliant or misleading claims, the consequences are severe. Infractions expose companies to substantial financial penalties and aggressive enforcement actions from regulators operating under applicable national laws. Beyond direct legal fines, the intense public scrutiny and reputational damage accompanying regulatory investigations introduce immense financial and brand-equity risks for any company failing to adhere to the new standards.
Good On You publishes transparent sustainability ratings for fashion, beauty, and retail, evaluating brands on key issues impacting people, the planet, and animals.
