Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet) researchers have placed greenwashing in "natural," "organic" and "vegan" labelling back at the centre of trade-press attention. Under the headline "Natural, organic and vegan: greenwashing is now harder to detect," the OsloMet analysis argues that consumers and procurement teams are losing the ability to separate verified certification from marketing copy in categories where the three descriptors increasingly overlap.

The OsloMet paper lands at a moment when beauty, food and personal-care aisles have converged on the same claim vocabulary. A face serum, a plant-based yogurt and a household cleaner can now carry all three descriptors simultaneously — and the underlying evidence base for each can be entirely different.

The framing targets a pressure point shared by cosmetics, food and personal-care manufacturers. Each of the three claims — "natural," "organic," "vegan" — sits in a different regulatory lane, and none carries a single harmonised benchmark a formulator, retailer or compliance officer can apply across markets. That asymmetry is the engine of the detection problem OsloMet is naming.

Why is detection harder now?

• The proliferation of SKUs carrying one or more of these labels has outpaced retail buyers' capacity to verify them at the shelf.
• The descriptors cross product categories: a shampoo, a snack bar and a shoe can all carry "vegan" without reference to the same standard.
• Without a harmonised benchmark for any of the three terms, detection depends on access to the underlying certification documents, not on the label itself.
• Marketing copy has scaled faster than the third-party audit infrastructure that would normally police it.

What does this change for formulators?

• Expect retailers and online marketplaces to push documentation requests further down the supply chain, asking suppliers to evidence every natural-organic-vegan descriptor on-pack.
• INCI list hygiene alone will not clear a greenwashing inquiry; the descriptor above the ingredient list is now its own evidence file.
• Brand owners should map which claims live at ingredient level, product level and brand level — each tier carries a different evidentiary standard.
• Cross-functional teams (R&D, regulatory, marketing) need a single source of truth for every descriptor in the artwork file, not three parallel ones.

What should procurement verify?

• For each "organic" or "natural" claim on a spec sheet, request the issuing body and certificate reference.
• For "vegan," ask which standard the brand has aligned with, and whether the claim has been third-party audited or self-declared.
• Treat any supplier that cannot name the underlying standard as a category-level risk, not just a documentation gap.
• Add a "claim substantiation" column to supplier scorecards alongside COA, MSDS and INCI checks.

What is the next data point to watch?

• The first published follow-up from OsloMet — specifically, whether the researchers release the methodology, sample categories or audit framework behind the headline.
• Any peer-reviewed companion paper identifying the label categories where detection failure is highest.
• Industry associations publishing comparable audits that allow brands to benchmark themselves against competitors.

The first concrete signal to monitor is whether OsloMet publishes the underlying methodology; without it, the warning remains a thesis rather than an industry action item — and procurement teams will be left auditing the label, not the data, until that methodology arrives.