Trade-Offs - Net Environmental Benefit
The US has now come on board with most other guidelines in requiring you to consider whether an improvement you've made on one environmental front (e.g., reducing the amount of petroleum-based plastic you use) has worsened other environmental impacts your product has. Let's not paraphrase this important wording, which is: "If a qualified general claim conveys that a product is more environmentally beneficial overall because of the particular touted benefit(s), marketers should analyze trade-offs resulting from the benefit(s) to determine if they can substantiate this claim." (US Guide, §260.4(c); emphasis is ours.)
Canada's Guide provides, among other related principles, that, "It is not permissible to shift the environmental burden from one stage of a product's life to another and then make a claim concerning the improved stage without considering whether there is, in fact, a net overall environmental benefit." (Emphasis is ours.) It also incorporates the ISO 14021 provision saying that claims must not only be true for the finished product, but must also consider all relevant aspects of the life cycle, "to identify the potential for one impact to be increased in the process of decreasing another."
Trade-offs...shifts of environmental burden...increasing one impact while decreasing another – what they are asking is whether the change you're touting really yields a net environmental benefit or whether your product is now LESS environmentally friendly.
And by the way, your general claim may still be sunk if misleading in the larger picture
In most places, even if the specific change you've made hasn't resulted in any particular environmental downsides itself, you could still get into trouble saying, "Eco-friendly: 30% less plastic". When? Say the materials you use – and have always used – are sourced from incredibly polluting plants and shipped from overseas when everyone else sources them locally, you pillage local water supplies that are scarce, and commit all sorts of other environmental sins. In that scenario, do you think that giving a specific attribute (30% less plastic) to explain your general "ecofriendly" claim will save your general claim from being misleading?
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