California Attorney General Rob Bonta is pushing for a change in Federal Trade Commission regulations that would require all U.S. companies to abide by California standards that govern when a company can advertise itself as “green.”
In a letter last week, Bonta and 15 other blue state AGs called on to FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan to adjust the agency’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims, or “Green Guides.” Bonta said making it harder for companies to call themselves “green” is a step that’s needed to “bolster consumer protection laws against advertising that overstates environmental benefits,” or “greenwashing.”
Bonta argued the FTC should follow California’s model as a “leader in reducing waste, enacting environmental laws with the highest standards, and protecting and preserving our precious natural resources.”
“FTC’s Green Guides must be updated and strengthened to better ensure individuals and businesses can base their consumer decisions on accurate information,” Bonta said in a statement.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (R) speaks as state Senator Anthony Portantino (L) (D-Burbank) and California Attorney General Rob Bonta (C) look on during a press conference on February 01, 2023 in Sacramento, California. ((Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images))
“We are urging the federal government to go even further in developing strong standards to protect people from misleading information and to establish a stringent baseline for environmental marketing claims,” he said.
Bonta says he wants to “expand the scope of the Green Guides to consider how the standards for each environmental marketing claim could be clarified and strengthened to better ensure they are supported by real environmental benefits.”
But Bonta’s action was criticized by a Republican counterpart who says the request is out-of-bounds for attorneys general.
“Attorneys general must ensure that unelected federal bureaucrats can’t just issue whatever rule they want in order to further their radical climate agenda, not encourage them,” Republican AG Andrew Bailey of Missouri told Fox News Digital in a statement.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who faces reelection Tuesday night. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The AG’s wrote that, “the stated purpose of the Green Guides is to ‘help marketers avoid deceptive environmental claims under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.’”
“The Guides have come to play an important role in establishing the bounds of such claims,” they said.
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“Indeed, as our States endeavor to address critical environmental issues — climate change, the pollution of our air and water, emerging contaminants, and solid waste disposal, among so many others — the value of baseline standards for evaluating whether environmental marketing or promotional claims are deceptive and thus potentially unlawful under consumer protection laws cannot be overstated,” they wrote. “Our efforts are wholly undermined by such unscrupulous environmental marketing.”
For example, the states are asking that the FTC require that if businesses that want to make a renewable energy claim, it should be “underwritten by actual environmental benefit, wherein marketers who make renewable energy claims must actually procure and use renewable energy.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group via AP)
Among other things, the AG’s also want the FTC to change the definition of “compostable” to incorporate both scientific standards and the known practical limitations of composting at scale.
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“FTC should make explicit that ‘recyclable’ means what the FTC has intended it to mean and what consumers understand it to mean: that when the consumer properly disposes of a “recyclable” item, it is actually recycled as a matter of course,” Bonta said.
Bailey said that such changes would not only be additional burden to companies, it would also unconstitutionally bypass Congress.
The FTC did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
