Abstract – Although there is often no solid data foundation, the literature shows an increase in the use of ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ labels due to the pressure exerted in aligning with the European Green Deal. The relationship between greenwashing, green marketing, and evidence-based marketing is explored through the ECO Nexus project. We propose a conceptual framework that targets the connection between the design of these green messages, the quality of environmental data, and the credibility of sustainability information. The results outline support transparent communication, verifiable through the subsequent creation of practical guidelines. Keywords: Greenwashing, green marketing, ECO Nexus project, evidence-based sustainability communication, circular economy.

I. INTRODUCTION

One of the most pressing challenges of our days, which the ECO Nexus project addresses, lies at the intersection of environmental governance and industrial transformation and refers to the capacity of Romanian companies to adopt circular economy principles [1], industrial symbiosis mechanisms [2] [5], while maintaining efficient operational consistency and balance with the help of digital monitoring tools [6].

As the name suggests, in our project activities we focus on the water – energy – materials – fertilizers nexus [7], viewed as an integrated system [8], and the flows (of resources, waste and residual energy) are, and can be continuously exploited, beyond organizational boundaries, thus reducing production costs and the (negative) impact on the environment. One of the important activities of the project (a core component) aims at communicating sustainability results.

We are also under high pressure from the regulations of the European Green Deal, namely the mandatory ESG reporting requirements set out in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the new Directive 2024/825 (Fig.1). Considering these regulations, the directive framework stimulates sustainability communication but also establishes sanctions for unfounded claims.

In its research design, the project activities integrate a marketing and communication dimension. An explicit concern in the data collection tool administered to companies in the agro-industrial production sectors in the western region of Romania investigates the extent to which these companies are concerned with their environmental performance. We capitalize on the selected responses (our questionnaire is active and can be fully accessed at the following link: https://forms.gle/8a55hFpubMWMNFX3A), to carry out their quantitative and qualitative analysis on the following topic of interest: To what extent does the existing data infrastructure support evidencebased sustainability communication and what is the gap in avoiding facilitating greenwashing?

1 Politehnica University of Timisoara, Faculty of Management in Production and Transportation, Timisoara, Romania, larisa.ivascu@upt.ro; Academy of Romanian Scientists, Bucharest, Romania 2 Politehnica University of Timisoara, Department of Communication, Timisoara, Romania, victoria.cociota@upt.ro 3 Politehnica University of Timisoara, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Timisoara, Romania, simon.pescari@upt.ro 4 Politehnica University of Timisoara, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering; National Research and Development Institute for Welding and Material Testing (ISIM), Timisoara, Romania, asirbu@isim.ro

5 Politehnica University of Timisoara, Department of Structural Funds, Timisoara, Romania, roxana.sirbu@upt.ro 6 S.C. GRIMET Construct S.R.L., Bucovat, Timis, Romania, p.grigorof@grimetconstruct.ro

In 2021, the European Commission conducted a screening of commercial websites [9], found that two out of three products analysed contained unverifiable environmental information or claims, and that, before any ESG risk, greenwashing [10] is a real threat to the credibility of green finance. This aspect leads to the eroding of consumer and investor trust in the field of sustainability communication. So that, our challenge is more than technical, it becomes communicative, because we need to ensure that the sustainability results [11], generated by the project are communicated in a specific, verifiable and transparent way.

Our paper is further structured into the following sections: the conceptual framework in section II defines greenwashing and green marketing and anchors the bibliographic reference base of the study, section III describes the methodology part, the results related to the selected questions from the data collection tool are discussed in section IV and, finally, we formulate the conclusions, limitations and future research directions.

II. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

It is well known that the American environmental activist Jay Westerveld was the one who introduced the term greenwashing into the specialized literature, 20 years ago. This phenomenon has undergone a remarkable evolution, so that it becomes mandatory and necessary to distinguish between the misleading promotion of a so-called „green” image and the „authentic green” ecological marketing [10], [12].

The green marketing term was introduced by Michael Jay Polonsky [13] in parallel with the phenomenon of greenwashing, in 1994, as „the set of activities that satisfy human needs and desires with minimal impact on the natural environment.”

A PRISMA systematic review of the literature on the concept of greenwashing was conducted in 2020 by Netto et al. [14], who proposed a taxonomy structured into four main forms (Fig. 2). Then, in 2021 this perspective is expanded by Szabo and Webster [15], who demonstrate that the greenwashing phenomenon affects more than the company’s ecological credibility, namely the emotional state of consumers, including the perception of the product, with direct implications for promotion and digital communication strategies.

By bibliometrically analyzing 419 articles published between 2004 and 2024, Persakis et al. (2025) conduct the most comprehensive and recent study confirming the main documented effects of greenwashing [16], namely the depreciation of brand value, an undermining of progress towards authentic sustainability and last but not least the erosion of consumer trust. Thus, priority research directions in this regard are identified, through normative regulation and psychological impact.

We believe that these three contributions are the ones that best substantiate the integrated analytical framework of our work. However, relevant to the ECO Nexus project [8], as will be presented in the discussion section, is the Open Data Institute (ODI) report [17], because it operates at the necessary level regarding data infrastructure and identifies this three systemic factors (Fig. 3): framework fragmentation, data opacity and accountability deficit.

Fig. 4 presents the conceptual architecture of our project model, which illustrates the main argument of the paper. The risk of greenwashing is moderated directly by the quality of evidence and through its monitoring tools, through the EMA/MFCA tools, and through the data platforms for industrial symbiosis, which meet in node 2 of the model the entire chain of the architecture is strengthened.

III. METHODOLOGY

environmental monitoring; (3) barriers to transparent communication of sustainability and (4) competitive advantage versus compliance obligations. These items were chosen because they map onto nodes 2 and 3 of the ECO Nexus Ecosystem Model (Fig.4) and facilitate grounded empirical evaluation of the analysis.

For our study we used a mixed approach, combining the structured literature review from section II with quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary data collected using the ECO Nexus questionnaire. Our data collection tool is composed of 7 thematic sections focused on 25 questions covering the following topics: organizational profile; circular economy and Green Deal; strategic objectives; impact of technologies and risk appetite; industrial symbiosis and collaborations; necessary support and collaboration with ECO Nexus; final comments. Participation was solicited through a dedicated and disseminated webinar for companies in the manufacturing and agro-industrial sectors and was applied online. For the analytical focus of our paper, questions and answers addressing the following topics were selected: (1) key environmental indicators and the extent to which companies track CO₂ emissions, water consumption, waste consumption; (2)

IV. DISCUSSIONS AND RESULTS

As previously stated, this section of our paper mainly relates to the relationship between data, green marketing and the risk of greenwashing, which will be interpreted directly through the model in Fig. 4 and nodes 2 and 3, which are dedicated to the data communication infrastructure. Fig. 5 summarizes in graphical form the four topics that we will address further.

A. Environmental monitoring and the evidence base

From the analysis of the responses regarding the monitoring of environmental indicators, we find that all companies are concerned about this aspect, and the distribution of the results confirms that there is a core of data, but it is far from universal. Almost two thirds declare that they monitor energy consumption as a priority, more than half water consumption and almost half waste generation. This information leads us to the idea that there are a series of data indicators that can be used both for reporting and for sustainability marketing, but because about a third state very clearly that they do not have a systematic monitoring of environmental performance, we conclude that these are only general estimates. The environmental claims regarding the degree of monitoring illustrated by Panel A are a proxy from the perspective of the ECO Nexus Ecosystem Model because the communication space is structurally vulnerable to the risk of greenwashing, even if positive intentions are revealed.

B. Circular economy between opportunity and

capacity limit The attitude towards the circular economy and the perceived internal capacity are found in Panel B. A scale of 1-5 was used, and for the topic of our paper the answers to these two statements are interesting: „Circular economy improves competitiveness”, respectively „Internal expertise for circular solutions”. The average of 4.1 result for the first statement indicates that the majority considers circularity as an opportunity for competitiveness, and the average of 3.7 for the second statement suggests a moderate and

heterogeneous internal capacity between sectors. Which leads us to the idea that the ECO NEXUS Ecosystem Model positions the circular economy as a driver for the development of skills and data infrastructure that allows for evidence-based communication. C. The digital divide

Regarding the results in Panel C, the analysis shows that there is a difference of almost 2 points between the expressed interest and the actual capacity regarding the current level of digitalization of environmental data. The recorded averages, respectively 4.3 for interest and 2.6 for digitalization, indicate a clear appetite for such data-driven approaches, but at the same time demonstrate the absence of the technical and organizational infrastructure to match the appetite.

If we look at the results obtained in terms of communication, the analysis confirms these barriers. Although this profile can lead us to greenwashing claims, at the same time we can also think of greenhushing communication (a deliberate undercommunication of environmental claims) [18], [19]. Our model is designed to reduce such a gap, because it provides the necessary framework to integrate data into a format that can then be used for communication and decision-making. D. Perceptions of industrial symbiosis

The perceptions of industrial symbiosis that we can observe on Panel D indicate an average of 4.0 for „Environmental impact reduction” and an average of

3.8 for „Cost reduction potential”. Environmental benefits are therefore expected [20], at the same time as economic benefits [21]. It also shows the existence of a core of organizations that are in partnership and exchange resources. The results also indicate a specific problem, because the environmental value is distributed between partners. This risks an overestimation of the individual contribution of the partners. The ECO Nexus Ecosystem model aims at this aspect, and through a data infrastructure created at the network level, each partner will be able to communicate with credibility its own contribution to the results of the industrial symbiosis. This reduces the marketing narrative of both greenwashing and greenhushing, by achieving authentic collaborative communication.

Viewed in the four Panels of Fig. 5, the conclusion suggests that the analyzed sample is at the „intermediate readiness” level in terms of credible communication of sustainability, and the risk of greenwashing derives mainly from the tension created between aspirations, regulatory pressures and availability of data resources (the „infrastructure gap” observed in our study).

As a central message of the analysis, we can distinguish that organizations can reduce the risk of sustainability communication from a marketing perspective through phased investments in monitoring, digitalization and not by avoiding communication. We believe that the ECO Nexus Ecosystem Model offers the integrated transition framework who connects environmental practices, data infrastructure, but also market communication, all of which are aligned with the regulations and requirements of Directive (EU) 2024/825.

V. CONCLUSION Making misleading or unfounded claims about the environment and its protection is a characteristic practice in the risk of greenwashing. Thus, the fact that remedial measures are needed is proliferated, and regarding the sustainability claim in corporate communication, the important thing is the green marketing strategy. Through this paper, we examined greenwashing and evidence-based sustainability communication, by panning a dual perspective. The conceptual framework is grounded in recent literature, one of the perspectives and the other is based on empirical data collected using the questionnaire that was administered to the project participants, directly during a webinar. Industrial companies from the Western Zone of Romania, participating in the ECO Nexus project, also answered questions related to environmental performance, circular economy maturity, digital innovation and industrial symbiosis. The analyzed results show how the sustainability claim is perceived, how credible it is and the fact that authentic green communication can truly be supported by a data infrastructure with the help of integrated digital tools.

We believe that the results of this analysis should be interpreted as an indicative model, due to the relatively small and context-specific initial and intermediate sample. This would be the main limitation of our study.

We also believe that in future research we will be able to capitalize on the findings of this study and expand the sample, compare the sectors and organizational profile of the respondents, and, of course, examine how digital data communication on sustainability is carried out.

Authors: Larisa IVASCU, Victoria COCIOTĂ, Simon PESCARI, Nicusor-Alin SIRBU, Roxana SIRBU and Petru GRIGOROF