IS IT REALLY GREEN? A CROSS-JURISDICTIONAL ANALYSIS OF GREEN CLAIMS IN INDIA AND INTERNATIONAL JURISPRUDENCE

In the recent times, the concept of green claims has garnered enough attention in the sustainability market which has raised concern regarding false environment claims and deceptive sustainability claims. There are ongoing rising risks regarding green claims which are due to the semantically vague environmental terminology.The term greenwashing is a practice of advertising products or services as environment-friendly or claiming to be sustainable, but they are not in reality.These green claims affect the decision making of the consumers as they rely on linguistic cues and are often misled by these claims. Deceptive claims are not limited to the environmental impact rather it has a broader element of ESG performance metrics. Situating the discussion within the consumer in Transition, the paper foregrounds the role of digital interfaces-online marketplaces, social media influencers, algorithmic curation and personalized adsin shaping how consumers encounter and interpret sustainability claims. The paper makes an attempt to analyze the legal and regulatory framework in addressing the greenwashing claims in an increasingly date driven and digital marketplace in India and having jurisdictions like UK, USA, Australia and Singapore as comparative benchmarks.