FTC Green Guides.

Guidance rather than a rule you breach directly: 16 CFR § 260.1 says the guides confer no rights and do not bind the Commission or the public, but the FTC can act under Section 5 of the FTC Act where a claim is inconsistent with them, and they reach business-to-business transactions as well as consumer marketing. “Eco-friendly” is a general environmental benefit claim under § 260.4, which tells marketers not to make unqualified ones at all, on the reasoning that such claims convey far-reaching benefits nobody can substantiate; the fix is clear and prominent qualifying language limiting the claim to one specific benefit. “Non-toxic” has its own section, § 260.10, and the bar there is competent and reliable scientific evidence that the item is non-toxic for humans and for the environment, not for one of the two. The FTC’s own page still lists 2012 as the most recent revision, after 1992, 1996 and 1998, so nothing has moved despite a review opened in 2022. For a print shop the exposure sits in product copy nobody reviewed: “eco-friendly water-based ink” on a storefront reads as a general benefit claim about the whole shirt unless it is qualified down to what you can actually show.