THE COLOUR OF EVIDENCE

THE GREEN SHELF

Stand in front of almost any supermarket shelf and sustainability has a recognisable appearance.

It is there in the muted greens and earthy browns, the leaves curling around a label, the recycled-paper textures and the words natural, conscious or planet-friendly. A bottle may be matte rather than glossy. A box may leave part of its cardboard unbleached. A typeface may look handwritten, a landscape may appear where a product photograph might once have been. None of these choices tells us, on its own, how a product was made. Together, they can tell us how the product would like to be read.

The judgement can happen remarkably quickly. Before we know where the materials came from, how much energy was used in production, whether the packaging can actually be recycled, or what happened along the supply chain, we may already have an impression of which product is the more responsible choice.

That impression is not incidental. Research into packaging and consumer perception increasingly shows that visual cues can shape how environmental responsibility is understood. In a 2026 study of 1,004 Italian household food purchasers, green packaging consistently increased perceived environmental friendliness across most of the product categories examined, including when it appeared alongside vague sustainability claims (Cappella et al., 2026). The colour was not evidence of better environmental performance. Yet it helped create the perception of it.

This is one of the quieter achievements of modern sustainability marketing. Long before most of us learned how to interpret a life cycle assessment, distinguish recycled content from recyclability, or ask what sits behind a carbon-neutral claim, we learned what green looked like.

There is nothing inherently deceptive about that visual language. Green is a colour. A leaf is an image. Brown cardboard may simply be brown cardboard. Design has always helped products communicate before we have had time to examine them closely.

The problem begins when appearance starts doing the work of evidence.

On 27 September 2026, that distinction became harder for businesses selling to European consumers to ignore. New rules under the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition directive began to apply across member states, tightening the conditions under which environmental claims and sustainability labels can be used. Generic claims such as green or environmentally friendly now face much stricter conditions on when they can be used; certain sustainability labels are also more tightly regulated; and product claims of a neutral, reduced or positive greenhouse-gas impact cannot be based on offsetting outside the product's value chain in the ways the new rules prohibit (European Parliament and Council, 2024).

The significance of the change reaches beyond a list of words that marketers should or should not use. The directive recognises something that advertising has understood for much longer: an environmental message does not have to exist only in a sentence. It can also be pictorial, graphic or symbolic, and the legislation explicitly acknowledges that colours and images can contribute to an implicit environmental claim (European Parliament and Council, 2024).

That makes the question facing sustainable consumption more interesting than whether a particular shade of green is misleading.

For years, environmental responsibility has existed partly as an aesthetic: something that could be suggested through a package, a symbol, a texture or a carefully chosen word. Regulation is now beginning to ask what sits behind that suggestion.

Sustainability developed a visual language long before most consumers developed the tools to verify it.

And that creates a new question for both businesses and designers.

What happens when looking green is no longer enough?

© 2026

sezer@sezerali.com

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