Week 36 ·
Week 36: 100+ misleading claims this week, none of them green
Nobody was fined for a green claim in the Nordics last week. Konsumentverket has not put out a press release since 27 May. Finland's KKV newsroom stops at 2 July. The Danish Consumer Ombudsman's last word on environmental marketing was the revised recommendations of 1 July. What did get taken apart, four weeks before EmpCo applies, was a fibre badge, a shrinking shampoo bottle and a gas bill. Shoppers do not keep separate accounts for these things. Someone who has just found out that the fibre badge overstated the fibre, and that the bottle got smaller without saying so, will not read a green claim generously on 27 September.
Regulation & policy
Netherlands · EnergyPublished 28 August 2026
The Dutch regulator puts a number on who pays for the gas exit
ACM published a paper warning that gas transport tariffs for households will roughly quadruple by 2050, because the fixed cost of the network gets shared across a shrinking number of connected customers. Transport accounts for about €200 of a typical €1,680 annual gas bill today; ACM projects roughly €790, taking transport from around 12% to about 35% of the bill.
Board member Manon Leijten put the emphasis on who is left holding the bill. The households still on the network are disproportionately the ones who do not get to decide whether their home is retrofitted. ACM asked ministers and parliament to look at paying for decommissioning out of general revenue, or at dropping the mandatory removal obligations.
Until now the cost of leaving gas has been argued in the abstract. ACM has put a euro figure on staying.
Sources: ACM, Stijgende gastransporttarieven richting 2050 (28 Aug 2026)
Consumer & brand
Netherlands · Grocery claimsPublished 21 August 2026
Over 100 supermarket products carry fibre claims that do not survive the back of the pack
Consumentenbond found more than 100 products whose front-of-pack fibre claims do not hold up. Becel Haver en Vezels delivers 0.3 g of fibre per portion. AH's kruidkoekreep rozijnen contains twelve times more sugar than fibre; Appelsientje Vezelrijk roughly seven times. A third group of claims is calculated on the dry product and misses the legal threshold once it is cooked.
Its advice to shoppers was to ignore the front of the pack, read the nutrition table, and let a Nutri-Score of D or E settle the matter whatever the badge says.
It is the same trick EmpCo outlaws on green wording next month: a precise-sounding badge doing the work of a claim nobody checked. Nutrition claims fall outside that directive.
Sources: Consumentenbond, Voedselfabrikanten misleiden met vezelclaims (21 Aug 2026)
Netherlands · Pricing trustPublished 24 August 2026
Shrinkflation has not gone away, and Dutch consumers now want France's disclosure rule
Three days later, Consumentenbond published dozens of new shrinkflation cases recorded over the past year. Andrélon conditioner has moved from 300 ml to 250 ml to 200 ml while the price rose from €5.49 to €6.49, an increase of 48% per 100 ml. M&M's bags went from 440 g to 400 g to 363 g, leaving shoppers paying about 10% more per 100 g.
Its objection was that the disclosure only runs one way. Extra content gets announced on the front of the pack; less content gets recorded on the back. Consumentenbond wants either a note on the pack or a shelf warning, as France already requires.
France aside, no EU market makes a shrinking pack say so. If the Dutch adopt the rule, shoppers get to see price fairness on the shelf instead of working it out themselves.
Sources: Consumentenbond, Krimpflatie nog niet verdwenen (24 Aug 2026) · RetailTrends (24 Aug 2026)
Research · New indexLaunched 28 August 2026
A new quarterly consumer-sustainability index launches, reporting 74% willingness to pay
Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management launched the Vanderbilt Consumer Sustainability Index, a quarterly tracker of how sustainability-minded consumers say they are. The inaugural reading, from 2,528 nationally representative US adults surveyed in July 2026, is 69.2 out of 100. Eighty-three per cent of respondents scored above the midpoint, 87% said they want companies to help them be environmentally friendly, and 74% said they would pay more for sustainable products.
It covers the United States only, and it asks about attitudes rather than purchases.
That 74% sits well above what European trackers have reported this year. Asking people whether they approve of sustainability and asking what they last bought give different answers, which is worth remembering whenever a figure this size turns up.
Client sectors
Fashion · Impact evidencePublished 26 August 2026
Four-fifths of a garment's impact is decided before anyone sews it
An analysis by the advisory group 2B Policy of France's textile ecoscore database, 36,860 products submitted by 89 contributors, found that raw material acquisition and processing account for 45% of a garment's environmental impact, and manufacturing a further 34%. Close to 80% of the burden sits upstream of the factory gate.
The authors argue that EU rules have concentrated on manufacturing and end-of-life rather than on fibre sourcing, which carries the biggest share of the impact and is where brands can see least.
From 27 September a garment sold in the EU cannot be called sustainable without proof. On this evidence the proof sits two tiers up the supply chain from whoever is making the claim.
Sources: Ecotextile News, Raw material impacts reveal EU footprint gap (26 Aug 2026)