Checking your website for green claims: how to run an EmpCo audit – manual vs. automated

A green-claims audit covers more than the obvious advertising slogans. Relevant is everything that attributes an ecological benefit to a product, a service or the company:

• •Text claims on all page types: homepage, product pages, category copy, landing pages, blog, “About us” – including phrases like “sustainable”, “eco-friendly” or “eco”. Which terms are banned from 2026 is listed in its own article.
• •Climate claims such as “climate-neutral” – in particular whether they rest on offsetting or on substantiated reductions.
• •Labels, logos and badges: own labels without independent certification must be removed.
• •The visual presentation: imagery and design can also convey an environmental claim – a robust audit evaluates text and visual presentation together.
• •Future promises (“by 2030 …”): permissible only with verifiable, public interim targets.

The classic process: marketing, sustainability and legal read the website page by page, collect claims in a spreadsheet and match them against the available evidence. The effort for this can quickly reach five figures – spread over weeks for large websites.

A bigger problem than the cost is reliability: three departments assess the same phrase differently, thoroughness depends on the day, and the website keeps changing during the review. The end result is rarely a complete picture – but a snapshot with gaps, from which the next warning letter can still emerge.

The obvious middle way – dropping screenshots into ChatGPT and asking about greenwashing – fails on reproducibility: a single AI pass can produce a different result for the same page on every run. For a legally relevant review, that is not enough.

A robust audit checks every claim in multiple stages – analysis, critical cross-examination, reconciliation across several runs – and evaluates text and visual presentation together. Only that makes the findings complete and traceable: they must still hold up when the legal department or an external law firm questions them.

The EmpCo Audit is an automated, multi-stage quality-assured website audit. It detects sustainability claims that become a legal risk under EU Directive 2024/825 (EmpCo), the UWG and green-claims case law – and hands them to marketing, sustainability and legal as a prioritised, evidence-focused list of findings.

Important for context: the audit does not replace the lawyer. It replaces the weeks of manual groundwork before. The final legal review builds directly on the prioritised list instead of having to read hundreds of pages – exactly the division of labour the ESG professional in the Reddit quote above discovered for themselves.

The question “Who owns greenwashing risk: marketing, legal or sustainability?” from the ESG forums hits the organisational core of the problem. Legally, the company is liable; internally, the risk sits in the gap between departments working in separate tools: marketing writes the copy, sustainability supplies the data, legal reviews – but nobody has the full overview of the website.

That is exactly why the legacy review so often stays undone: formally, it belongs to no one. A shared audit as a single source of truth closes this gap – all three departments work from the same prioritised list of findings instead of three different spreadsheet versions.

The easiest entry point is the free sample page: you give us the URL of your website, we check one page with the full multi-stage process, and you see on a concrete example which claims are flagged as critical – with location and rule reference.

This is the fastest way to clarify internally how big the topic actually is for your website – before you decide on the full audit. And if individual phrases are already known to be risky: how to rewrite green claims legally is covered in the article with the permitted-vs.-banned examples.

How do I check my website for green-claims risks?

Manually, several departments read the website page by page, collect claims and match them against evidence – an effort that can quickly reach five figures. An automated EmpCo audit takes over this groundwork: it identifies critical claims with their exact location and rule reference and delivers a prioritised list on which the final legal review can build.

Isn’t it enough to show ChatGPT a screenshot?

No. A single AI pass is not reproducible – the same page can produce a different result on every run. A robust audit checks every claim in multiple stages (analysis, critical cross-examination, reconciliation across several runs) and evaluates text and visual presentation together. Only that makes the findings complete and traceable.

Do I also have to review old website pages and legacy content?

Yes. The rules apply to all claims that are public from the cut-off date – including legacy pages, product copy and landing pages that have grown over years. This is exactly the core problem: most companies do not know what is written on hundreds of their own pages. An automated audit provides a complete overview within hours.

Who is liable for greenwashing – marketing, legal or sustainability?

Legally, the company is liable; internally, the problem usually sits in the gap between departments working in separate tools. Marketing writes the copy, sustainability supplies the data, legal reviews – but nobody has the full overview of the website. A shared audit as a single source of truth closes exactly this gap.

What should companies do now?

Inventory all environmental claims and review them before the cut-off date. Remove generic claims or back them with evidence, drop non-certified labels, and revise offsetting-based climate claims. A fixed approval process between marketing, legal and sustainability, plus an audit of external communication, is recommended.