that includes two new requirements for buyers of Rainforest Alliance Certified commodities: the Sustainability Differential and Sustainability Investments. The Sustainability Differential is an “additional cash payment made to certified producers over and above the market price of the commodity.” This payment is completely free of restrictions or requirements on how it is used. The Sustainability Investments are “cash or in-kind investments from buyers of Rainforest Alliance Certified products to certified producers for the specific purpose of helping them meet the Sustainable Agriculture Standard.” To address the structural inequalities in the cocoa sector, persistently low incomes, and the challenges farmers face in negotiating prices, the Rainforest Alliance will introduce a minimum Sustainability Differential at $70 per metric ton for its cocoa program, as of July 2022. Use of seal In the mid 2000s the organization certification was criticized for allowing the use of its seal on products containing only a minimum of 30 percent certified content. However, the current standard requires 90 percent certified content, or 100 percent equivalent certified volume via a certified mass balance supply chain. The exception to that rule is herbs, where the minimum threshold was 40 percent up until the end of 2021 and 50 percent thereafter, and palm oil, where the minimum threshold is 30 percent. In any case, products containing herbs and palm oil that meet the minimum threshold but do not meet the 90 percent threshold are required to indicate the amount of certified content on the label. Lawsuit filed against Rainforest Alliance An article in The Guardian reported that the U.S. nonprofit Water and Sanitation Health (WASH) filed a civil lawsuit against Rainforest Alliance in 2014, alleging that the Rainforest Alliance was responsible for unfair marketing because it certified Chiquita banana suppliers as sustainable when they were “contaminating drinking water with fertilizers and fungicides and have air-dropped pesticides perilously close to schools and homes” in Guatemala, raising the issue that the Rainforest Alliance was facilitating the “greenwashing” of companies making environmental claims. In the same article, the Rainforest Alliance called WASH’s allegations untrue, said it stands by its auditing practices and also objected to the lawsuit’s charges that the alliance sells its endorsement. The nonprofit Truth in Advertising also reported that WASH was suing Rainforest Alliance for allegedly misrepresenting how earth-friendly its certified products actually are. Costa Rican pineapples A report in 2020 by The Guardian alleged that some Costa Rica pineapple