Green Is the New Black: The Rise of Green Marks and Possible Solutions to Greenwashing

Abstract

If a popularity contest were to occur among colors nowadays, green would be the winner by far. Fast and alarming global warming has created huge and obligatory changes to consumer habits. This has put some big burdens on companies to massively change their production processes. Due to a significant percentage of consumers having changed their purchasing habits, companies are taunted with being green, and they have started greenwashing practices to take advantage of consumers’ new habits without changing their corporate policies. The rise of greenwashing has caused an urgent need to protect consumers and the market. Both Turkish and foreign governments regulate certain markets such as food and agriculture and also bring certain restrictions in terms of advertisement law to eliminate deceptive images from being created in consumers’ eyes. However, the gap in green marks shows the urgent need to amend the trademark law approach to protect consumers from greenwashing and to safeguard the proper functioning of the market. This work first examines the definition of green marks and ecolabels, as well as their confusing concepts, followed by present regulations regarding different legal areas. Upon this, the study then discusses the urgent need to regulate trademark law regarding green marks and makes proposals for legislation in line with recent EU regulation proposals regarding green claims. © Annales de la Faculte de Droit d'Istanbul.All rights reserved