Green Claims in Canada: What You Now Have to Be Able to Prove
By The Velocity Wear Team
Almost every new clothing brand wants to say something about sustainability, and almost all of them reach for the same vocabulary — eco-friendly, sustainable, conscious. Amendments to Canada's Competition Act in 2024 made that vocabulary considerably riskier, by requiring that environmental claims about a product be based on adequate and proper testing, and claims about a business be substantiated in accordance with internationally recognised methodology.
The practical shift is about sequencing. The evidence has to exist before you publish, not be assembled if somebody challenges you.
The two limbs
Broadly, the provisions distinguish claims about a product's environmental benefits — which need adequate and proper testing — from claims about a business or its activities, which need substantiation based on internationally recognised methodology. A clothing brand routinely makes both kinds without noticing the difference.
"This hoodie has a lower environmental impact" is a product claim. "We are working toward net zero" is a business claim. They are held to different standards and neither is satisfied by a general intention to do better.
Words that create exposure
- "Eco-friendly" and "environmentally friendly", which imply an overall benefit essentially no physical product can substantiate.
- "Sustainable" as an unqualified adjective describing a garment rather than a specific, evidenced practice.
- "Carbon neutral" without a clear explanation of how, including the role of offsetting.
- "Natural", which says nothing measurable about environmental impact and is routinely used as though it does.
- "Recyclable" where no practical route exists for a consumer to recycle a mixed-fibre garment.
What holds up instead
Narrow factual statements about specific attributes, each of which you can evidence. "Made from certified organic cotton", with the certification named. "Shipped by sea." "Printed with water-based inks." "Packaged in paper mailers rather than plastic."
Each is checkable and implies nothing beyond itself. Collectively they tell a customer far more than a general badge does, and they cost you nothing except the discipline of accuracy.
Certified fibre claims need the certificate
Organic and recycled content claims generally rest on certification schemes with chain-of-custody requirements. A supplier saying the fabric is organic in an email is not the same thing as certification covering the finished garment.
If you intend to make such a claim, ask for the documentation at quoting stage, keep it, and check specifically whether it covers the garment as produced or only the fibre input. That distinction is glossed over constantly and it is exactly what substantiation means.
The claim always available to you
Durability. A garment that lasts longer is straightforwardly better, and unlike almost every other environmental claim, the customer can verify it by owning it.
It is also something you directly control: heavier fabric, rib with real recovery, twin-needle seams, embroidery rather than a print that will crack, and honest care instructions. That is a genuine contribution and a product improvement at once, and it requires no substantiation file because it is not an environmental claim at all.
A simple internal test
If you cannot point at the evidence for a claim in under a minute, do not publish it. That one rule removes almost all greenwashing exposure, and in our experience of writing product copy it improves the copy — because what replaces the vague claim is a specific fact, and specific facts persuade.
