Companies interested in the scope of environmental marketing claims and mitigating potential litigation risks should act fast as the window for comments is closing soon.

By Paul Davies, Robin M. Hulshizer, Jacqueline Y. Zhang, Danny Dvorak, Julia Hatcher, and Tony Kim

Latham & Watkins presents a blog series on the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (Green Guides). This second post provides updates on anticipated revisions to the Green Guides to help companies mitigate litigation risk and stay abreast of regulatory changes.

Since their initial publication in 1992, the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (the Green Guides or the Guides) have been widely used to help drive corporate marketing, as well as litigation strategies for public and private litigants. The FTC is collecting public comments on how the Guides have operated and should operate in the marketplace moving forward and recently announced that it is extending the window for comments by 60 days to April 24, 2023. The questions posed in its December 2022 Federal Register Notice likely foreshadow the types of environmental marketing claims companies should keep a watchful eye on in the decade to come.