Federal Court of Justice Hearing: Can Companies Advertise as “Climate Neutral”?

The manufacturing process itself is not free of emissions, but the company supports climate protection projects to compensate. The complainant believes that the advertising is therefore false. Important information – such as how to achieve climate neutrality – was withheld from users.

After the hearing at the highest German civil court, the competition center sees its position in the legal dispute strengthened. Managing director Reiner Münker explained in Karlsruhe that, based on the Senate’s projection, he believed that he wanted to comply with the current strict requirements for environmental and climate reporting in advertising. He leaves the negotiation with a good feeling. At the beginning of the hearing, the presiding judge emphasized that stricter rules apply to environmental advertising. It is not yet clear when a decision will be announced in the proceedings.

Do you know enough about climate neutrality?

The Competition Center was unsuccessful in its bid for an injunction in the lower courts. The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court argued that consumers understand the term “climate neutral” to mean a balanced CO₂ balance. They knew that neutrality could be achieved through compensatory measures. According to the court, it is essential that Katjes provided sufficient information online about how the climate neutrality of the products is achieved. Readers of the trade magazine were able to access more information about this on a website using a QR code.

That’s not enough for the competition headquarters. Information about how climate neutrality has been achieved should appear in the advertising itself, says Münker – best divided according to which emissions the company itself saves and how much balanced. It must be possible to distinguish between companies that achieve a real reduction in their emissions through high investments and technical improvements and those that do not change anything in their own work but pay money to climate projects.

Before the first civil assembly of the Federal Court of Justice on Thursday, the question was whether the advertising was aimed at a specific audience or average consumers, and whether certain circles could be expected to have a higher knowledge of the subject of norm neutrality -weather. . The lawyer on Katjes’ side also argued that the phrase “climate neutral” has a strong content, compared to other advertising statements about product sustainability. The term is understood as a fair CO₂ balance – which can be achieved through avoidance, but also through compensation.

Stricter requirements for advertising with sustainability

There was a similar legal dispute last year at the Regional Court of Karlsruhe regarding the labeling of products from the drug chain dm as “climate neutral” and “environmentally neutral” (case no. 13 O 46/22 KfH). Unlike Katjes, the court here decided, after a lawsuit from Deutsche Umwelthilfe, that dm is no longer allowed to advertise their own brands with both terms. Consumers should be able to see information on the package about the measures the manufacturer takes to compensate for CO₂ emissions during production, for example there are stricter requirements for companies that ‘ advertising the stability in the works at the level of the EU. In January, the EU Parliament gave the green light to ban vague statements about the environmental impact of products if there is no evidence of this. This is intended to limit “greenwashing” – the practice of making companies or products appear more environmentally friendly than they really are. A green application guide is also currently being worked on.