Environmental claims be a bit of a white rabbit.

Do only scientists get to do them? Must the sustainability team always look at them before you go live? And wait, must you have to have a sustainability team to write them in the first place?

Part of what we built ABLE to do was fill the gap between the need for on-brand product marketing, and real claims supported by real, scientific data – without big brand or sustainability teams.

For many brands that are still founder-led or working in a more agile way, we create claims toolkits that lay out creative ways to talk about the outcomes they’ve proven on ABLE, without running the risk of greenwashing. One brand we recently ran this process for is a Peruvian organic cotton brand of elevated basics called Unne.

Here's 4 guidelines for writing product sustainability claims that will get you well on your way to being a sustainability copy pro.  

1. Set your scope.

A scope tells your readers exactly what impacts you measured in your supply chain. At ABLE, we build ISO-aligned, PEFCR compliant life cycle assessments across Environmental Footprint (EF) 3.1 midpoint impact category results. But what does all this mean? Let’s break it down. 

How to do it:

Every footprint claim rests on 3 choices. If your copy names all 3, essentially you've showed your work, just like math class. It allows anyone to check it, and understand where you got to, and how you got there.

1. Name the standard (the process).
ISO 14040 and 14044 are the international standards for building a life cycle assessment (LCA). They don't decide what a study finds. They set the steps for finding it:

• set the goal and scope

• list every input and output at each stage

• turn that list into environmental impacts

• interpret what the results mean

Say: "Our footprint follows ISO 14040/14044." That tells people you used the global method, not one built in-house.

2. Name the category rules (the product-specific rules).
ISO sets general rules for any product. Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) are the European Commission's rules for one product category, such as apparel. They set which impacts to measure, what data quality is good enough, and how to handle steps unique to that supply chain.

Say: "…applying the PEFCR for apparel and footwear." That makes your results comparable with other apparel LCAs, not just consistent with themselves.

3. Name the impact method (what was measured).
The impact method sets which environmental impacts get counted, and how. The two most common are:

• TRACI was developed by the US EPA and is used mostly in North America. It has about ten classic categories, including global warming, ozone depletion, acidification and smog.

• EF 3.1 is the EU method, and it's widely used beyond the EU. It has 16 impact categories, including land use and water and resource use. It also splits climate change into fossil, biogenic and land-use sources.

Say: "…with impacts measured using EF 3.1." That tells people how broad and detailed the assessment was.

4. Keep it one click away.
You don't need all of this on every claim. But the full sentence should sit on the same page or one click away:

"This footprint follows ISO 14040/14044, applies the PEFCR for [product category], and measures impacts using the EF 3.1 method, with background data from ecoinvent 3.12."

2. State your boundaries.

Like Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett, Han Solo and Chewbacca – Marty McFly and Doc Brown!! Numbers and boundaries are only at their best when paired together.

A number with no boundary can't be checked against anything, so you should never publish one without saying where it came from. At ABLE, we state the study type, the standard, and the functional unit once, then repeat the functional unit next to every figure that follows it.

How to do it:

Every time you cite a figure, attach the functional unit (ie one garment, 1 bag of coffee), the boundary (cradle-to-gate: raw material through the factory gate, not use or disposal). 

Example from Unne:
"2.80 kg CO2e per Balloon Skirt, cradle-to-gate.” 

Crade to gate: the boundary.
Balloon skirt: the unit 

3. Name your source.

One question we get asked a lot is: “what if some, but not all, of my suppliers share info with me - can I still make claims?” And the answer is, yes! You can. In this case, we fill in the gaps with numbers from a database housed within ABLE’s platform from the nonprofit ecoinvent. In it, we have what we call “proxies.” These are industry averages for specific materials, created in specific ways in specific places - for example: cotton fabric, dyed in Peru. 

“Why not always use proxies?” You might ask. And the answer is because a proxy isn’t as accurate as your own data. It’s the average of a bunch of different datasets across supply chains - not, specifically, yours. Without gathering your own data, you can’t make claims about the specific numbers and practices you do - and it’s harder to stand out and get credit. 

How to do it:

Since not every number in a footprint comes from the same place, like any good writer, we don't let readers assume it does. Primary supplier data, utility bills, chemical recipes, production records, gets named as such. Industry-average data filling the gaps gets named as that too.

For example: to build Unne’s footprint, 3 different Peruvian suppliers shared 12 months of verified 2025 data. Then, for raw materials, washing and ginning - we used ecoinvent. Both are stated, and then blended into outcomes.

Example from Unne: "Each figure blends verified supplier records with ecoinvent EF v3.1 data."

4. Write to educate.

Claims written only to sound 100% positive run the risk of greenwashing – and, they don’t reflect the realities of production in an imperfect world. Instead, we write to educate people on what actually happened. When there's nothing flattering to report, we say so plainly.

How to do it:

Most sustainability legislation or anti-greenwashing rules come down to this principle, at their core: they’re built to guide brands toward educating consumers, instead of making claims that use opacity to guide them into thinking they’re buying into something that they’re not. The more specific your claim, the stronger your claim.

For Unne, this meant skipping broad claims like "eco-friendly" and writing instead: "This garment was manufactured on a majority hydroelectric power grid in Peru, which produces less carbon per kWh than average."

Notice what it doesn’t say: carbon sequestering (it might, but we still have to prove it - more on how to do that here!). It also doesn’t claim less carbon than another garment. Although, if we did a comparative LCA (link to Tuff Tee), Unne could likely claim that, too!

Conversely, notice what it does say. It talks about the grid. About the comparison Unne can make (less carbon per kWh). It educates people about the why behind the brand being “better” not just the what.

Check out Unne’s sustainability marketing for more inspiration (and don’t forget to shop their collection!) here.