Watch a replay of the webinar here, or scroll down for a summary and a preview.
How can you make sustainability claims about your products and avoid ‘greenwashing’? Learn how trans-Tasman hygiene company Essity (formerly Asaleo Care) uses credible environmental data from Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) to design and market its products.
Rochelle Lake, Essity’s Head of Marketing B2B, and Anne Lindsay, Marketing Manager, share how the manufacturer uses sustainability tools to make decisions and why it includes the verified information EPDs contain in its advertising.
Our Technical Director Jeff Vickers joined Rochelle and Anne. Jeff explained how to make accurate environmental claims about your products.
Here's a preview of our webinar
In the webinar we learned:
Be specific with your environmental claims
Our Technical Director Jeff Vickers shared his tips for avoiding greenwashing. These include avoiding jargon, accurately describing environmental impacts, and having evidence to back up your claims.
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) show your product’s impacts
Rochelle explained how Essity measured the impact of the products made at its paper mill in Kawerau on New Zealand’s North Island. The LCA showed ‘hotspots’ in the process. Packaging and transport were less than 5% of the product’s carbon footprint. This suggested Essity could focus on parts of the life cycle with larger impacts.
Data guides decision-making
Essity’s research found 57% of the emissions from its hand towels came from decomposing in a landfill. Composting halves these emissions so Essity had its handtowels independently certified as compostable.
Verified data can be used in marketing
Anne explained how Essity make claims on the front of its products (e.g. ‘Handee Paper Towels are home compostable’). The back of the pack and the Essity website gives more details, including the standard it complies with (AS5810).