And that's not all.
Go ahead. Ask us what's new and exciting.
The big news, of course, is that on October 1, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") finally released its final revised Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims ("US Guide"). The revisions went into effect on October 11, 2012.
That wasn't all though. The granddaddy of international green guidelines, ISO 140211, was also updated on December 15, which may affect the countries that look to those guidelines for their rules. Canada is one of them, as the Competition Bureau's guide, Environmental Claims: A Guide for Industry and Advertisers ("Canada's Guide") is based on ISO 14021. Further steps would need to occur before our guidelines reflected the ISO 14021 amendments. The 2010 Green Claims Guidance of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ("UK Guide") also draws on ISO 14021. It already contemplated and referenced the ISO 10421 amendments.
Brazil has extensively revised its green provisions as well. They went into effect in August 2011. New Zealand's self-regulator issued a revised Code for Environmental Claims, coming into force January 2013.
The final guideline news we'll mention is Australia's new Carbon Price Claims: Guide for Business. This was introduced on November 15, 2011 (and updated in May 2012) in light of the carbon-pricing regime that went into effect in Australia on July 1, 2012. What's a carbon-pricing regime? It requires some large businesses to buy carbon credits to offset their emissions. That means their costs will go up and some consumer prices will also go up as the costs are passed down the chain. Having a vivid imagination, Australia's false advertising regulator thought some companies might want to raise their prices and (falsely) blame the full hikes on the carbon price. Or perhaps scare consumers into thinking that electricity prices were going to go sky high so they should waste no time in buying low-carbon energy alternatives like solar panels. The Guide was brought in to head them off at the pass.
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