GPCA | As regulatory pressure on green claims intensifies, GCC chemical companies face a growing imperative to communicate sustainability progress in ways that hold up to scrutiny.
In this article, Philipp Meister, Alice Joubay and Janina Morgen Cros of Quantis examine the two failure modes threatening credibility in sustainability communications: greenwashing, where claims are vague or unsubstantiated, and greenhushing, where companies stay silent about genuine progress out of fear of scrutiny. With regulations like the EU’s EmpCo directive raising the bar for substantiation, the authors argue that getting claims right is no longer optional.
The piece outlines five principles for credible environmental claims — specific, measurable, relevant, understandable and accessible — and explains why robust life cycle assessment, particularly ISO-compliant Product Carbon Footprints, is the foundation that makes these claims defensible. For GCC producers embedded deep in B2B value chains, the authors show how the quality of upstream data directly shapes the credibility of sustainability claims made further downstream by consumer-facing brands.
