FTC Issues Guidelines for Green Marketing : Regulation: The move is an attempt to reduce consumer confusion over environmental labeling of products.

In a landmark move to reduce consumer confusion over environmental labeling of products ranging from diapers to trash bags, the Federal Trade Commission Tuesday released the first national marketing guidelines for companies to follow.

This marks the broadest effort to date to end disputes among environmentalists, consumer groups and corporations over the meaning of such terms as recyclable, biodegradable or ozone - friendly .

In recent years, the use of so-called green marketing techniques has dramatically expanded amid controversy over the accuracy of manufacturers’ claims. Federal and state authorities have prosecuted producers of hair sprays, diapers, trash bags and other goods under consumer fraud laws.

Many manufacturers have become frustrated and wary of using environmental claims--no matter how legitimate--for their products, since there were no standards widely honored by environmentalists, consumer advocates and other critics.

Meanwhile, consumers have become skeptical of most environmental claims.

Business representatives expect the FTC guidelines to spark a new, but more credible, round of environmental marketing claims because companies that comply with the FTC guides will be considered to be safe from FTC action, and likely most state truth-in-advertising laws.

The FTC’s guidelines for some of the controversial terms include:

* Recycled content: An advertiser should be able to prove, and quantify, the amount of material in a product or package that has been kept from a landfill or retrieved as manufacturing scraps. Unqualified claims can be made only when the entire product or package--excluding “minor, incidental components”--is made of recycled material.

* Recyclable: This should be used only if the product or package can be reused as raw material in making a new product or package.

* Ozone - safe and ozone - friendly: These should not be used if the product contains any ozone-depleting chemical. Claims that a product has reduced ozone-depleting potential must be substantiated.

* Degradable, biodegradable and photodegradable: A product that might degrade quickly in the open air, but does not in landfills--where it commonly ends up--could not use these terms without qualification. Recent studies have shown extremely low rates of decomposition in the largely airless, waterless modern landfill.

The FTC standards were greeted with a rare unanimity among business, consumer and most environmental groups.

“We’re very pleased,” said Melinda Sweet, director of environmental affairs at Lever Bros. Co. and a longtime proponent of national standards.

“It’s a breakthrough,” Sweet said. “Industry has been waiting for this approximately two years.”

Also supportive are some of industry’s toughest critics.

“This is a real victory for business and consumers,” said Minnesota Atty. Gen. Hubert H. Humphrey III, head of a task force of state attorneys general that has been suing companies under state consumer fraud laws, contending that their environmental claims could not be supported.

Though generally supportive, environmentalists want more specific definitions of such marketing terms from Congress or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Richard Denison, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, called the guidelines “a significant advance” but added, “We just don’t want it to end here.”

Environmentalists eventually want terms such as recycled restricted to products containing specific minimum percentages of recycled material. Many environmentalists believe such terms should be defined to reflect environmental goals. For instance, if it becomes national policy to recycle 50% of all rigid plastic containers, only containers likely to be recycled at that rate would qualify for the label recyclable.

Manufacturers consider such specific standards an infringement of their free-speech rights in advertising. Such specific product standards, reflected in a rash of recent laws in several states, have had “a chilling effect on manufacturers,” said Juanita Duggan, senior vice president of governmental affairs for the National Food Processors Assn.

“We hope that the FTC process will provide a level playing field for the market to reassert itself,” Duggan said, adding, “I think there will be widespread (company) compliance” with the new guidelines.