Selling Products and Services to the Federal Government

Providing Product Information

When marketing to the federal government, it is important to provide complete and accurate information about the environmental attributes of your products or services. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has published Guides for Use of Environmental Marketing Claims to ensure that environmental claims are appropriately used in product marketing and advertising and it is important to consider these. The FTC guides establish four general principles for environmental marketing:

• Qualifications or disclosures must be sufficiently clear and prominent to prevent deception.
• An environmental marketing claim should be clear whether the environmental attributes or benefits refers to the product, the package, or both.
• Avoid overstating environmental attributes and claims.
• Present comparative statements in a manner that makes the basis for the comparison sufficiently clear to avoid consumer deception.

FTC also provides guidance on the appropriate use of the following categories of claims:

• Claims of general environmental benefits.
• Claims that the product is degradable, compostable, or recyclable.
• Claims of recycled content, source reduction, refillable, or ozone safe/ozone friendly.

The guide is available from the FTC Web-site at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/grnrule/guides980427.htm, or the FTC Public Reference Branch, phone 202-362-2222.

For more information about how to sell products and services to the government visit http://www.epa.gov/oppt/epp and view the document entitled, Selling Environmental Products to the Government, Your Map to the Federal Marketplace.