The European and National Legislation supports consumers in making conscious purchase decisions contributing to increase the market for sustainable products and, at the same time, protects them from unfair commercial practices, such as:

• – greenwashing (use of misleading environmental claims);
• use of unreliable and non-transparent sustainability logo and information.

ORIENTA carries out the assessments of:

1. Environmental and ethical claims made by Certified Organisations in accordance with the requirements defined by specific reference standards.
2. Self-declared environmental and ethical claims: statements, symbols, graphics on products or packages indicating environmental and/or ethical aspect regarding a product, component or packaging which are made without independent third party certifications.

These assessments concern:

• – Validation of claims that are intended to be used or applied in the future (confirmation of plausibility)
• Verification of claims that have already been used (confirmation of truthfulness)

This assessment process includes the following steps:

1. verifying the existence of the conditions for evaluation;
2. materiality analysis assessing that specific issues addressed in the assertions are:

• appropriate and meaningful
• do not hide other negative impacts due to other products or other processes.

1. verifying whether the claims are:

• accurate, verifiable, non-generic, relevant and not misleading;
• truthful;
• proven and substantiated;
• supported by an explanatory statement that avoids any misunderstandings.