On November 01, 2024, the Department of Smart Economics of the Educational and Research Institute of Law and Modern Technologies of KNUTD organized a lecture by a foreign lecturer, Ms. Mazur Iryna, a lecturer at the School of Global Business, Dublin University of Technology, Ireland. The lecture was attended by students of the department studying in the specialties 051 “Economics” and 281 “Public Management and Administration”, students of the specialties “Marketing”, “Management”, “Accounting and Taxation”, “Finance, Banking, Insurance and Stock Market”, “Entrepreneurship and Trade”. The lecture was attended by more than 100 students of bachelor's and master's degrees.

As part of their pedagogical practice, the lecture was also attended by postgraduate students of the Smart Economics Department to deepen their skills in organizing classroom activities using the Internet.

The lecture “Green Sales” was based on regulatory materials with reference to the EU standards and regulations regarding communication between producers and consumers on the environmental parameters of goods: Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, Regulation 2021/119 establishing a framework for achieving climate neutrality and amending Regulations (EU) No 401/2009 and (EU) 2018/1999 (“Fit for 55”).

At the beginning of the lecture, Iryna MAZUR determined the impact of green sales management on the environment and the need to carry out appropriate calculations of this impact throughout the product's life cycle.

Along with the theoretical aspects of the problem of selling green goods, the lecturer cited various practical situations of “green washing”, when manufacturers and sellers of goods deliberately give them “fictitious” environmental properties in order to increase sales. This also negatively affects the reliability of sustainability reporting data and the possibility of using it to assess the state of greening of production and consumption.

Therefore, the following rules should be followed in sales management and marketing communications:

• independent third-party verification of carbon footprint calculations gives customers confidence that claims are accurate and reliable;.
• customer trust needs to be built on clear, transparent, and non-vague or misleading communication about your carbon footprint;
• always provide evidence and do not omit important information at all stages of the product life cycle;
• claiming that a product or organization has zero environmental impact is unfounded;
• sustainable development requires collaboration and sharing of experiences about successes and challenges;
• always critically evaluate the results of your work, as we are far from solving the problems of global warming. Recognize that there is still much work to be done.

We are deeply grateful to Iryna Mazur for the interesting lecture. We look forward to new meetings and hope for the opportunity to hold an offline lecture directly at our university.

04.11.2024