The government may enforce tougher labelling standards to counteract companies accused of exaggerating their products' environmental benefits, following a Commons committee recommendation.

MPs on the Commons Environmental Audit Committee are pushing to enforce a universal scheme which will be verified independently to prevent ‘greenwash’ which is causing customer confusion, the Guardian reports.

The committee also recommended giving greater powers to trading standards officers and the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) to act when companies make misleading claims.

The ASA has highlighted the issue in recent years, following a number of complaints about misleading claims about the environmental impact of products.

Colin Challen, the Labour chairman of the environmental information sub-committee, said: "The government has to act to deal with the problem of greenwash. Clear labels are needed to help consumers make informed choices but for consumers to have confidence in them, environmental labels must be backed up by independent monitoring that is fully verified.

"The environmental choices a consumer makes buying shampoo are different to those they make when buying a car. Whatever we are buying, more needs to be done to make clear the environmental choices we each make whenever we choose one product over another.

"An effective environmental labelling regime will also generate the kind of market signal needed to trigger a transformation in business activities all the way down the supply chain of a particular product. This kind of action is vital if we are going to decarbonise the UK economy."