Better Cotton appeals to US body to not rely on LCAs
17/05/2023
Better Cotton said the FTC should continue to include examples of substantiation from a range of methods and avoid limiting substantiation to one standard methodology, such as LCA or product environmental footprints (PEF).
It said LCA raises challenges when applied to an agricultural context. If this approach is adopted in the revised guides, some of the most widely used sustainability schemes and their labels would effectively be unable to provide environmental marketing claims for their members.
The ability for Better Cotton members to communicate about their financial investment in Better Cotton to consumers strengthens their commitment to farm-level, it added.
The FTC is a bipartisan federal agency of the US government that champions the interests of American consumers. Its Green Guides framework was launched in 1992 to ensure that product sustainability claims made by companies are accurate and substantiated, with guidance updated intermittently. The guides are currently under review.
The guidance covers general principles that apply to all environmental marketing claims, including information on how consumers are likely to interpret particular claims and how these can be substantiated, and how marketers can qualify their claims to avoid deceiving consumers.
Aerial view of a field in a cotton farm in Mali. Credit: BCI/Seun Adatsi
Share this story:
