Environmentally friendly, environment-friendly, eco-friendly, nature-friendly, and green are marketing claims referring to goods and services, laws, guidelines, and policies that inflict reduced, minimal, or no harm at all upon ecosystems or the environment. Companies use these ambiguous terms to promote goods and services, sometimes with additional, more specific certifications, such as ecolabels.
Their general use as euphemisms can be referred to as greenwashing. The International Organization for Standardization has developed ISO 14020 and ISO 14024 to establish principles and procedures for environmental labels and declarations that certifiers and eco-labelers should follow. In particular, these standards relate to the avoidance of financial conflicts of interest, the use of sound scientific methods and accepted test procedures, and openness and transparency in setting standards.
