The Competition and Markets Authority’s Green Claims Code sets out what environmental claims businesses are legally allowed to make — and vague terms like “eco-friendly” or “sustainable,” used without evidence, can breach consumer protection law rather than simply being loose marketing language.

What the Green Claims Code actually is

The Green Claims Code was published by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to set out what businesses need to do to comply with existing consumer protection law when making environmental claims about their products or services. It isn’t a voluntary code of good conduct that businesses can choose to ignore — it’s the CMA’s own explanation of how established consumer protection law applies specifically to green and environmental marketing claims, including claims about recycling and waste handling.

The six principles businesses have to meet

The Code sets out six principles a genuine environmental claim needs to meet: claims must be truthful and accurate; claims must be clear and unambiguous; claims must not omit or hide important information; claims must only make fair and meaningful comparisons; claims must consider the full lifecycle of the product or service, not just one stage of it; and claims must be substantiated with evidence, ideally evidence that’s actually available to check. A claim that fails even one of these — for example, being vague enough to be ambiguous, even if not technically false — can fall foul of the Code.

Why recycling claims are a particular focus

Recycling and waste-related claims are specifically the kind of statement the Code is aimed at, because they’re easy to phrase vaguely while sounding precise. A statement like “we recycle everything we collect” or “100% landfill-free” is exactly the sort of unqualified, sweeping claim the Code’s guidance flags as needing solid evidence behind it — if a company can’t actually demonstrate what proportion of collected waste is genuinely recycled, versus incinerated, exported, or landfilled, that kind of claim risks being misleading under the Code’s principles, however good the company’s intentions might be.

What this means when you’re reading a waste removal company’s claims

A genuinely compliant environmental claim tends to be specific and checkable rather than vague. Guidance on the Code, published through Business Companion (run under the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, with government backing), gives a clear practical example: swapping a vague phrase like “made sustainably” for something specific and measurable, such as stating an exact recycled content percentage. Applied to waste removal, the equivalent would be a company stating a specific, evidenced recycling rate for the waste streams it handles, rather than an unqualified claim like “eco-friendly disposal” with nothing behind it.

Why the “full lifecycle” principle catches waste companies out

The lifecycle principle is worth dwelling on specifically for waste removal, because it’s easy to make a claim that’s technically true about one stage while ignoring the bigger picture. A company might genuinely recycle the metal, cardboard or wood it separates out, and market itself on that basis — while a much larger share of the same load, including mixed or contaminated waste, actually goes to landfill or energy-from-waste incineration. Under the Code, a claim needs to reflect the full picture across the whole process, not just the most flattering part of it, which is exactly why a specific recycling rate across an entire collected load is a stronger, more compliant claim than a general statement built around the best-performing fraction of what’s collected.

How it’s actually enforced

• Environmental claims are regulated under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which replaced the earlier Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 as the main legal framework covering misleading claims, including green claims.
• The CMA has direct powers to investigate and take enforcement action against businesses making misleading environmental claims, without necessarily needing to go through the courts first for civil enforcement action.
• Misleading claims can, in some circumstances, also expose a business to criminal liability under consumer protection law, not just civil enforcement or reputational damage.
• For a consumer, a company’s willingness to be specific and to show its working — naming actual recycling rates, facilities used, or certifications held — is a reasonable practical signal of a genuinely substantiated claim versus a purely decorative one.

FAQs

Does the Green Claims Code apply to small local waste removal companies, or just big corporations?

It applies to any business making environmental claims to market goods or services in the UK, regardless of size — a small local skip hire or man-and-van company making green claims is just as subject to the Code’s principles as a national waste management firm.

Is it illegal to simply say “we’re eco-friendly” with no further detail?

It can be, if the claim is vague enough to mislead a reasonable consumer and isn’t backed by evidence available to substantiate it. The Code specifically discourages unqualified, vague green terms in favour of clear, evidenced claims.

How can I check if a waste company’s recycling claims are genuine?

Ask directly what percentage of collected waste is actually recycled, and where it goes — a company with a genuinely substantiated claim should be able to give a specific answer, rather than repeating a general marketing phrase without detail.

Sources

This guide draws on the following primary sources, current as of 17 September 2026:

• CMA: Green Claims Code
• Business Companion: Environmental (‘green’) claims guidance

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