• Reuters, Thursday, October 7, 2010 10:57 AM

New rules on green marketing proposed by the Federal Trade Commission yesterday include banning advertisers from trumpeting that their products are "environmentally friendly" or "eco-friendly." "Very few products, if any, have all the attributes consumers seem to perceive from such claims, making these claims nearly impossible to substantiate," the FTC says in a statement announcing changes to its Green Guides, which were first issued in 1992 and revised in 1998.

But the FTC did not have anything to say about term such as "sustainable," "natural" and "organic," Diane Bartz reports. Why? Because those words are, in the wacky world of Washington bureaucracy, under the purview of the Agriculture Department.

Comments on the proposed changes will close on Dec. 10. The FTC will then will issue final rules. "Advertisers want a fair marketplace," says Dan Jaffe, chief lobbyist for the Association of National Advertisers. "If people are stepping over the line, they [advertisers] want that stopped because it will disadvantage them in the marketplace."

Read the whole story at Reuters »