"Green in Name Only": In the Era of Greenwashing Regulation, What Are the Response Strategies for Corporate Survival?...

Recently, the Fair Trade Commission and the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment jointly conducted greenwashing (eco-friendly disguise labeling and advertising) education, firing the starting signal for wide-ranging regulation of corporate environmental marketing. According to data released last year, the number of unfair advertisements related to greenwashing detected over the past five years reached 13,122 cases, showing that the authorities' blade is already sharp.

Global standards are also tightening. The United Kingdom imposes fines of up to 10% of sales on violating companies, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is likewise sharply raising the level of sanctions, imposing fines of 50,000 dollars or more per case.

In particular, online platforms are the fiercest battlefield where the surveillance of regulatory authorities and consumers intersect. Over the past four years, more than 3,000 violation cases were detected on a single portal site alone, and the number of detections through consumer reports also surged from 143 to 573 over three years. Between the government's integrated regulatory net aiming to eliminate blind spots and consumers who have evolved into active watchdogs, companies can survive only by discarding past complacent marketing practices and building immediate and substantive internal lines of defense.

The most urgent practical measure is to completely exclude marketing-centered abstract language expressions and to establish a thoroughly data-based verification archive. Emotional rhetoric that is difficult to substantiate—such as "eco," "nature-friendly," and "non-toxic"—is the number one target of greenwashing sanctions. When a company uses eco-friendliness or carbon reduction as a product selling point, it must match and retain, on a one-to-one basis, test reports from accredited institutions or clearly quantified objective data. Blocking the use of unprovable adjectives from the moment of drafting ad copy and establishing a compliance system that communicates centered on figures and facts is the first step in preventing unfair advertising risk.

For this data-verification system to operate seamlessly, a fundamental innovation of inter-departmental work processes is essential. The existing method, in which the marketing department finalizes planning and drafts and the legal team reviews afterward, has already reached its limits. From the early stage of product planning and marketing conception, research and development (R&D) personnel must mandatorily participate to provide clear technical grounds. A solid line of defense is built only when quantified source data provided by the R&D department, appropriate language refinement by the marketing department, and the legal team's judgment on the legality of integrated guidelines are internalized as a pre-approval process.

Attorney Kim Dae-su of Daeryun Law Firm said, "Furthermore, contractual relationships with external distribution platforms or advertising agencies must also be comprehensively reexamined from a legal perspective," adding, "Even if the wording was drafted at the recommendation of a distribution platform or under the lead of an agency, the final legal responsibility and the arrow of fines will ultimately point to the manufacturer and seller.

Therefore, when drafting an outsourcing agency contract, the responsibility for fines and brand damage arising from greenwashing issues must be clarified, and specific clauses for damages and rights of indemnity must be specified. In an intensifying regulatory environment, it is time to keep in mind that eco-friendliness is both a marketing matter and a domain of law and data, and to establish a seamless internal control system."

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