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The code was devised to assist businesses to advertise their green products and services with confidence and help protect consumers from bogus or inaccurate claims. The code was last updated in 2003 but due to the massive growth in the market for 'green' products, the code now needs revising to support businesses and ensure the broad range of environmental claims they make are accurate, truthful and relevant.

It is hoped the updated version will address gaps in the current guidance to keep pace with the vast range of claims made about products and services in order to boost consumer confidence in buying 'green' products and services.

Lord Philip Hunt said:
"Consumers are often confronted with all sorts of 'green' claims by companies and products. Working with industry and updating the 'Green Claims' Code will support business to ensure that their claims are genuine and meaningful. It will also reassure consumers that when a green claim is made, they can feel confident it is truthful."

Defra will be engaging with wider industry and businesses through workshops and meetings and will be making further announcements about the code's developments in the Autumn of 2009.

Greenwashing
Many companies have been criticised for the way they advertise their products to have greener credentials than they actually have.  According to TerraChoice there are 6 significant "greenwash sins":

• Sin of the Hidden Trade-off
• Sin of No Proof
• Sin of Vagueness
• Sin of Irrelevance
• Sin of Lesser of Two Evils
• Sin of Fibbing

By far the most common greenwash "sin" is Hidden Trade-off which "is committed by suggesting a product is 'green' based on a single environmental attribute (the recycled content of paper, for example) or an unreasonably narrow set of attributes (recycled content and chlorine free bleaching) without attention to other important, or perhaps more important, environmental issues (such as energy, global warming, water, and forestry impacts of paper). Such claims are not usually false, but are used to paint a 'greener' picture of the product than a more complete environmental analysis would support."

So widespread is Greenwashing that a website called the GreenWashingIndex.com has been developed so that consumers can shop offending companies.