We built an entire set of guidelines for how we assess a green claim. Then we published them.
Every claim assessed through Speeki GreenDesk® is evaluated against a defined, published set of guidelines — not internal judgment, not proprietary scoring, and not a checklist assembled for the purpose. Our guidelines are oublished as SPK GCMS3001:2026.
Scott Lane, CEO and Founder, and Lead Auditor
It is important that clients know how the work is being done and the standards we apply to our work.
The assessment methodology is formalised in SPK GCMS3001:2026 — Speeki's published, normative Green Claims Assessment and Certification Guidance — which is available under Resources.
What standards do we apply and include within our GCMS3001?
Lets start with ISO standards.
The primary technical standard is ISO 14021:2016 (Environmental labels and declarations — Self-declared environmental claims), which governs the fourteen specific categories of environmental claim most commonly made about products and packaging — recyclable, recycled content, carbon neutral, compostable, biodegradable, renewable energy, reduced water consumption, and others.
Alongside ISO 14021:2016, every assessment applies ISO 14020:2022 (the overarching principles framework for all environmental statements), ISO/TS 14067:2018 (the required methodology for carbon footprint calculations underlying any carbon neutral or net zero claim).
Local laws and regulations.
The applicable regulatory frameworks of every jurisdiction where the claim will appear — including the EU EmpCo Directive applying from 27 September 2026, the UK DMCCA and CMA Green Claims Code, the US FTC Green Guides and California SB 343, the Australian Consumer Law, and the applicable requirements of Singapore, Canada, and Hong Kong are all assessed.
Analogous fields also teach us about pre-publication review of green claims.
The requirement to substantiate an environmental claim before it is published is not a new idea. It has existed in pharmaceutical advertising for decades, where the US Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission require that health claims about products be supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence before those claims reach consumers.
There are many advertising rules and pre-authorisation assessment systems for health claims on food products, globally.
All of these fields share the same foundational structure as green claims assessment: a party makes an objective claim about a product to consumers; that claim must be substantiated before publication; an independent body assesses whether the evidence is adequate; and the standard of review is what a reasonable consumer would understand the claim to mean, not what the advertiser intended it to mean.
Speeki built the GreenDesk assessment methodology by importing fifty years of that developed practice into the green claims domain, where the regulatory framework is rapidly maturing but the pre-publication review infrastructure has, until now, not existed.
Standards also survive what policies and processes do not.
A policy written by a sustainability manager who leaves takes its institutional knowledge with it. A process that depends on individuals remembering to run it fails the moment those individuals change.
A documented standard creates documented, maintained, independently audited governance that is independent of any individual — it exists in the claims inventory, in the evidence files, in the pre-publication review records, and in the renewal programme, all of which a new person can read, understand, and continue without starting from scratch. That durability is not incidental to the value of a standard. It is the point.
SPK GCMS3001:2026 is the mechanism that turns good intentions about each environmental claim into a claim you can prove is working — and that keeps working regardless of who is running it.
How we manage claims through the assessment
When a claim is submitted to Speeki GreenDesk®, it enters a structured seven-stage assessment process managed by Nicole, Speeki's AI assessment engine, and reviewed and signed off by a Speeki Expert before any determination is issued.
The process begins with claim classification — identifying the claim type, the applicable ISO 14021:2016 category, and the regulatory frameworks of every market where the claim will appear.
From there, Nicole Ai applies the net impression assessment: not just what the claim literally says, but what a reasonable consumer in the target market would understand it to mean, taking into account the headline text, any imagery or visual context described in the submission, and any material information that is absent.
The ISO 14021:2016 clause-by-clause review follows, assessing the claim against every applicable requirement of the standard.
Evidence submitted with the claim is then scored against the competent and reliable standard — assessing whether it was produced by qualified experts, objectively, using accepted methodology, and whether it is current and specific to the product as currently marketed.
Disclaimer adequacy is assessed separately: whether any qualifier actually cures the headline claim, or merely adds small print that most consumers will never read.
Regulatory compliance is then assessed for every jurisdiction in scope, including checking for any absolute prohibition that applies regardless of evidence quality.
The result is a complete assessment file passed to a Speeki Expert, who reviews the full assessment, applies professional judgment, and issues a signed GreenDesk Determination Certificate — Green, Amber, or Red — with a written rationale that cites the specific standard, clause, or regulatory provision behind every finding.
What the determination means.
A Green determination means the claim as submitted conforms to ISO 14021:2016 and SPK GCMS3001:2026, complies with the applicable regulatory frameworks in every jurisdiction in scope, creates no misleading net impression for a reasonable consumer in the target market, and is supported by evidence that is competent, reliable, current, and specific to the product.
An Amber determination means the claim would receive a Green determination if specified modifications are made — every required change is stated precisely, with the specific provision it must satisfy.
A Red determination means the claim as submitted is non-compliant — every ground is stated specifically, citing the applicable clause, regulatory provision, or doctrine, so the claimant understands exactly what they are dealing with and what options exist. Every determination is reviewed and signed by a Speeki Expert.
No determination is issued by Nicole Ai alone.
The signed GreenDesk Determination Certificate can be referenced in regulatory submissions, procurement responses, board and audit committee reporting, and investor communications.
Why SPK GCMS3001:2026 had to exist as a normative standard.
When Speeki built the GreenDesk assessment service, the immediate question was what governs the assessment. An internal methodology — a set of procedures that Speeki follows but does not publish — would have produced determinations that clients and regulators would have to accept on trust. That is not good enough for a service whose entire value proposition is independence and credibility.
A determination issued under a published, versioned, normative standard is a fundamentally different thing from a determination issued under an internal process. It is examinable. A regulator, a procurement team, a board, or a court can read SPK GCMS3001:2026 and understand precisely what Speeki assessed, against what requirement, applying what methodology, and why the determination reached the conclusion it did.
The standard is what makes the determination defensible — not just to the client who receives it, but to every third party who will eventually rely on it.
Without a published normative standard governing the assessment, GreenDesk would be an opinion service. With GCMS3001, it is a certification service with a documented, auditable, and independently verifiable methodology behind every determination it issues.
Why SPK GCMS3001:2026 goes beyond ISO 14021:2016
ISO 14021:2016 is the right foundation and it is incorporated in full into every GreenDesk assessment. But ISO 14021 was designed to define what environmental claims must demonstrate — the technical requirements for specific claim categories, the general prohibition on vague or misleading claims, the evidence and verification requirements.
5 key reasons:
It was not designed to answer the operational questions that arise when an independent body actually conducts a pre-publication assessment of a specific claim in a specific market for a specific audience. It does not define how to determine what a claim actually communicates to a reasonable consumer — the net impression doctrine that has been the governing standard in advertising law for fifty years is absent from ISO 14021.
It does not define what makes evidence adequate in quality as opposed to merely existent — the competent and reliable standard applied by the FTC and the NAD is not in the ISO framework.
It does not address implied claims — claims conveyed through imagery, context, or the overall presentation of a communication rather than through explicit words.
It does not integrate the applicable regulatory frameworks of the jurisdictions where claims appear, which now include absolute prohibitions under EU Directive 2024/825 that apply regardless of how well a claim conforms to ISO 14021.
And it does not specify the assessment sequence, the determination criteria, or the certificate requirements that give the output of an independent review its legal and commercial weight.
Following ISO 14021 alone would have meant assessing whether claims technically satisfied the standard's clauses while leaving the most important question — what does this claim actually communicate, and is that accurate — largely unanswered.
Why existing ISO conformity assessment standards were also insufficient
ISO 17029:2019 — the conformity assessment standard for validation and verification bodies — provides the governance framework for how an independent body should operate: independence requirements, impartiality obligations, competence standards, record retention.
GCMS3001 is designed in accordance with ISO 17029:2019 and Speeki is seeking accreditation under it. But ISO 17029 does not specify what is being assessed or how. It governs the body, not the methodology.
Similarly, ISO 14020:2022 establishes general principles for environmental statements but does not provide the operational assessment methodology. The gap between the ISO framework and an operational, defensible, claim-level assessment methodology is real and substantial — and no existing ISO standard fills it.
SPK GCMS3001:2026 fills it by taking ISO 14021:2016 as the technical baseline, incorporating ISO 17029:2019 as the governance framework, adding the regulatory instruments that now apply in every major market, and layering in the advertising law methodology that fifty years of FTC, NAD, ASA, and EFSA practice has developed for exactly this kind of pre-publication independent review.
The result is not a departure from the ISO framework. It is the ISO framework made operational.