EmpCo Directive Compliance: How to Find, Fix, and Prevent Greenwashing

We've all seen marketing claims that stretch the truth, then stretch it some more. "Gluten-free" water is technically true and perfectly pointless. "Made from 10 recycled plastic bottles" sounds impressive, but tells you nothing about what else went into the product. That's marketing spin, and the worst it usually earned was an eye roll. 

As of September 2026, this spin can now land you in legal trouble. 

The EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (EmpCo) Directive introduces new restrictions on misleading environmental claims in marketing to EU consumers, including vague, unexplained claims like "eco-friendly" and "green."  

The rules apply to products already on the market, too. There's no grace for content that was published before the directive took effect. 

If your website, product pages, or campaigns still use broad environmental claims, we'll explain how Kontent.ai helps you find, flag, and revise them, keeping your content compliant. 

What the EmpCo Directive is and what it bans 

The EmpCo Directive, formally Directive (EU) 2024/825 on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition, is the EU law that strengthens consumer protection against greenwashing. As the European Commission explains, the directive requires validation for environmental claims to protect EU consumers. 

The directive was adopted on February 28, 2024, and went into effect on September 27, 2026, for all B2C companies doing business in the EU. That includes content and products already on the market, with no transition period for sustainability labels that fail the certification test. 

Four things are now off limits: 

• Generic environmental claims. Vague terms like "eco-friendly," "green" and "biodegradable" are prohibited unless they're accompanied by a clear and prominent specification on the same medium. 
• Offset-based "carbon neutral" product claims. Claims that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive greenhouse gas impact based on offsetting emissions outside its value chain are prohibited. 
• Self-made sustainability labels. Sustainability labels must be based on a certification scheme or established by a public authority. Certification schemes must meet requirements for independent verification and transparent criteria.  
• Future promises without a plan. Claims like "carbon neutral by 2055" need clear, objective, and publicly available commitments, a detailed and realistic implementation plan with measurable targets, and independent verification and regular progress reporting. 

The rules don't just affect blogs but brand and product names as well. A company name like "GreenClean" can also fall under the directive if it leads consumers to expect an environmental benefit without accreditation.  

What's at stake if green claims stay live 

Fines can reach 4% of annual turnover, and national authorities are the ones who impose them. EmpCo itself leaves penalties to each member state, so the exact regime depends on where you sell. A fine calculated on revenue instead of flat fines across the board means any violation can eat into your bottom line.  

If your teams cannot answer these four questions, you may be at risk: 

1. How many of our pages make an environmental claim, and where are they? The average Kontent.ai customer has a content library of 30,000 content pieces. Across blogs, product pages, markets, and languages, knowing exactly how many have generic claims and where they are is a big feat. 
2. Which of those claims could we defend to a regulator right now? Every claim needs supporting evidence that you can provide if requested. Vague claims need to be rewritten or removed, and those that can be backed up need validation visible to consumers. 
3. Who reviewed and approved each claim, and can we show it? Authorities may consider whether you made reasonable and proportionate efforts to comply. Keeping a record of reviews and approvals helps demonstrate the steps your organization has taken. 
4. What stops a prohibited phrase from being published tomorrow? Every new campaign and page is a fresh chance for a generic claim slip back in, and a one-off audit is only accurate on the day it finishes. 

If any of those answers are a guess, that gap is your exposure. The next two sections will walk you through how to close it, first by finding and fixing what is live, then by preventing the problem from creeping back in the future. 

Get compliant now: find, flag and pull risky claims with Kontent.ai 

The deadline has passed, so the first job is a cleanup of what is already live. In Kontent.ai, that cleanup runs in six steps, from building a term list to republishing corrected content. 

1. Build your claim list 

Start with the directive's own examples: "eco-friendly," "green," "climate friendly," "biodegradable" and "energy efficient." Add "sustainable," "natural," "carbon neutral," "climate neutral" and any phrases your own teams favor. If you publish in several languages, add the translations your local teams actually use.  

2. Search the whole inventory with Aiko 

Aiko, Kontent.ai's built-in AI agent, handles tasks across your content inventory, including targeted searches. You can ask it in plain language, for example: "Find every content item that contains 'eco-friendly,' 'sustainable' or 'carbon neutral.'" It returns a consolidated list of items that need review or editing, which gives your compliance team a ready-made review list. 

3. Scale up with Expert Agents 

For large inventories and multi-market libraries, Expert Agents take over. These purpose-built AI agents are designed for bulk content operations and can process many content items simultaneously in the background. They can scan, flag or update hundreds of items without anyone opening each one, which matters most for extensive product catalogs where manual review is impractical. You decide what they do, and your people stay in control of the outcome. 

4. Flag everything with a Sustainability Claims tag 

Kontent.ai's taxonomy lets you create custom classification tags. Create a "Sustainability Claims" tag and apply it to every item that carries environmental messaging. Reviewers and legal teams can then filter to all tagged items and work through them in one place. You can add further tags for claim type, such as generic, carbon, label or future promise, to help prioritize the queue. Review status is best tracked through workflow steps, which move each item through your process and record who acted on it at each stage.  

5. Triage, then pull the riskiest claims 

Not every flagged item carries the same risk. Start with the claims that are hardest to defend: offset-based carbon claims, homemade badges, and generic claims on high-traffic pages. Bulk unpublishing takes all of those items offline in one operation and moves them back to a draft or review state, so nothing non-compliant stays live while you fix it. The workflow history for each item records who moved it and when, giving you a clear trail of the actions your team took. 

6. Rewrite with specifics and republish 

Aiko can suggest more specific alternatives for flagged copy. Your team supplies the supporting evidence, a reviewer signs off, and the item goes back live. The pattern is nearly always the same: replace the adjective with proof. The examples below are illustrations, and every figure or certificate in them is a placeholder that must be true for your product. 

Stay compliant: build rules into how content gets made 

Once the initial cleanup is complete, the challenge shifts from finding problematic claims to preventing them from entering your content in the first place. 

Staying compliant means every new campaign, product page, and refresh meets the directive’s requirements from day one. Kontent.ai lets you set the rules and put the right people and tools in place, so every new piece of content can be reviewed before it goes live. 

Guidance where writers write 

Element-level guidelines let you embed written instructions directly in individual content fields. When a writer opens a description or marketing copy field, they see a prompt such as: 

"Do not use unsubstantiated environmental claims (e.g. 'eco-friendly,' 'sustainable,' 'green'). All environmental statements must include specific, verifiable supporting evidence in line with the EU EmpCo Directive." 

The best time to catch a vague claim is before it is typed, and the reminder appears in the field where the claim would be written. Any claims that still make it through are caught at the mandatory compliance review step before the content goes live, marking two stages where noncompliant content can be caught. 

A mandatory compliance gate 

Custom workflows let you add a dedicated "Legal & Compliance Review" step before anything goes live. Assign it to content types that carry environmental messaging, and a designated reviewer must approve each item explicitly before it can be published. The Sustainability Claims tag helps reviewers prioritize items that need the closest scrutiny, and every approval is recorded and can be used as evidence if an authority ever asks. 

Publishing rights for the right role 

Roles and permissions let you restrict publishing by role. Lock publishing of content with environmental claims to a specific role, such as a Compliance Manager, and no claim-bearing content goes live without that sign-off, regardless of who created or edited it. Writers keep writing, and the people accountable for compliance make the final call. 

A standing audit filter 

The Sustainability Claims tag keeps working after the cleanup. It gives your team a central view of content carrying environmental messaging, making periodic reviews easier to organize and manage. When guidance changes or your restricted-term list grows, filter on the tag to surface every item that may be affected, and point Aiko or Expert Agents at the inventory again to check for the new terms. 

How Kontent.ai keeps you compliant: A summary  

EmpCo compliance starts and ends with your content 

The September 27 deadline has passed, and the work continues after the initial audit. Every new campaign, product page and content update brings another opportunity for an unsupported environmental claim to slip through. 

The organizations that will avoid hefty EmpCo fines are those that know what claims they're making, can substantiate them, and, most importantly, have clear processes for reviewing and approving them. 

Want to see how Kontent.ai can help your team manage environmental claims across your content? Talk with an expert today.