GREENLIGHT STUDY - 2ND EDITION

State of greenwashing in Belgium in 2024

Launched for the first time last year thanks to the joint work between the advertising agencies RMB & JCDecaux as well as our startup GiveActions, the Greenlight study provides a picture of the state of greenwashing in Belgium. For this year 2025, the analysis was carried out on 13,368 advertisements present on TV, radio and paper posters (OOH) throughout Belgium in 2024.

The objective of this major analysis is to highlight the work that remains to be done in order to achieve a society without greenwashing in communications, but also to make advertisers aware of the good ways to communicate about their environmental aspects. Because it is necessary to keep talking about it, but in the right way! To accelerate the ecological transition.

This study was based on the ethical advertising rules provided by the Belgian and French advertising ethics boards (JEP & JDP), the ICC Code, the recommendations of ADEME in France as well as via the information included in the latest European directive on greenwashing.

It has an informative purpose and is based on all the information available. However, our skills do not allow us to determine 100% whether an advertisement is a case of greenwashing. Only juries are authorized to make this decision. That is why we are talking about the risks of greenwashing. Nor does this study aim to be guilt-inducing, but to make the various societal actors aware of good ways of communicating.

All these analyses were made possible thanks to our anti-greenwashing AI tool developed internally to automatically detect greenwashing in the various communication contents. If you want to know more, See you here.

Below, you can find the main results as well as the complete study.

The main lessons

7.8% of ads refer to an ecological aspect
27.4% of ads that refer to the environment are at risk of greenwashing. 72.6% respect the rules
The risk of global greenwashing decreased between 2023 and 2024, but the percentage of high-risk cases increased very slightly.
The sectors that talk the most about sustainable development are not especially those that are most at risk of greenwashing.

Download the old studies

Greenlight 2023 - Version FRGreenlight 2023 - Version NL

The press is talking about it

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