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Eastman is using AI to screen for greenwashing

The sustainability team at specialty chemicals company Eastman has turned to generative AI tools to fine-tune many of its day-to-day processes, including reviews of marketing material and packaging language to make sure they can stand up to greenwashing scrutiny.

The “Green Claims” persona has been in use for about six months. Created in response to a growing number of review requests by product and marketing managers in the company’s various lines of business, it screens claims quicker and more thoroughly than was previously possible. 

“The collaboration that it has enabled has been phenomenal,” said Laurel Baysal, director of corporate sustainability at Eastman.

The sustainability team gathered green claims guidance from the Federal Trade Commission, European Union and other sources to train the chatbot, which suggests changes to messaging language that make it more defensible, said Aaron Reeves, sustainability leader and segment market manager at Eastman, who created the tool. 

“It helps push the knowledge and capacity of each of us as a sustainability manager,” he said. “It helps us look at each line item and really think it through.”

In particular, AI has prompted rewrites for generic phrases and statements. Claims that an ingredient is “biodegradable,” for example, must be accompanied with information about the conditions under which that is possible. Likewise, a descriptor like “compostable” must come with information about whether a commercial or residential composting system is required.

One word that is definitely being using less frequently as a result of AI guidance: sustainability. More specific language is clearer for consumers, Reeves said.

All Eastman employees are encouraged to use Copilot AI features that are included in the company’s Microsoft software site license. The company’s information technology organization provides basic AI training, and that enabled the sustainability team to write the Green Claims chatbot.

The team will continue to refine the resource as new claims guidance is adopted, and it is considering ways that similar AI tools could make other processes more efficient. It will enlist Eastman’s AI team for input before the tool is made available to a broader audience.

“The more you can dial in the prompt and keep it focused, the better,” Reeves said.

AI and sustainability will be a central theme at Trellis Impact 26 including mainstage conversations with leaders paving the way for sustainable data centers like Microsoft’s Jim Hanna and Danielle Decatur, of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, as well as the AI x Sustainability Program including focused sessions like how AI is changing investor analysis of corporate disclosure and how to use AI to tackle supply-chain deforestation.

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