The European Commission is also working on an upcoming legislative proposal to help justify (‘substantiate’) green claims and prevent greenwashing.

As a report by the think tank [Institue for Sustainable Development and International Relations, or] IDDRI shows, the calculation method behind a sustainability label is a political decision on the desirable future of agriculture production. Methods based on life-cycle analysis, such as the PEF, point towards sustainable intensification by design, and not to a transition of the current food system towards organic and other agroecological practices.

Therefore, the Commission’s proposal runs the risk of being misleading and worsening ongoing greenwashing in the food and fashion industries.

…

While the product-focused PEF serves well to compare manufactured industrial goods, the approach significantly lags when evaluating the environmental performance of complex agricultural systems, including natural fibre production, in a holistic way. When applied to food, the PEF gives misleading results, since the more extensive the agricultural practice is, the worse it scores, evaluating products as an indicator of yields. For instance, eggs from hens in cages score better than free range eggs, which in turn score better than organic eggs.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here