Competition watchdog the ACCC has had a greenwashing win in court against claims made on certain GLAD products.
The Federal Court today has Clorox Australia to pay a total penalty of $8.25 million for making false or misleading representations to consumers that certain GLAD kitchen and garbage bags were partly made of recycled ocean plastic.
Clorox admitted that it breached the Australian Consumer Law by representing on the packaging of its GLAD to be GREEN “50% Ocean Plastic Recycled” Kitchen Tidy Bags and Garbage Bags products that the products were made of at least 50% recycled plastic waste collected from the ocean or sea, when this was not the case.
More than 2.2 million products were supplied in this packaging.
The products were actually made from about 50% plastic waste which had been collected from communities in Indonesia with no formal waste management systems, situated up to 50 kilometres from a shoreline, and otherwise from non-recycled plastic, processing aid and dye.
“Claims about environmental benefits matter to many consumers and may impact their purchasing behaviour,” ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.
“When those claims are false or misleading, this is a serious breach of trust, as well as the Australian Consumer Law.
“This is also a significant matter because consumers have limited or no ability to independently verify the accuracy of the claims made on packaging and it also disadvantages competitors who are accurately communicating their environmental credentials.
“We consider this penalty is appropriate in this case where Clorox gave insufficient consideration to what ‘ocean plastic’ meant to an ordinary consumer, particularly in light of the blue colour and wave imaging on the packaging.”
The Court held that these features “connoted a relationship between the Products and the ocean” and the “reference to ‘green’ on the Packaging connoted environmental-friendliness”, and that these were “important contextual matters in assessing the contravening conduct”.
It was also observed by the Court that “there is a particular societal harm that arises when conduct undermines consumers’ confidence in environmental claims”, adding that the “development of products that minimise adverse environmental impacts is beneficial” but “[e]nvironmental claims are useful for consumers only if they are accurate.”
Clorox was also ordered to set up an Australian Consumer Law compliance program, publish a corrective notice on its website, and pay part of the ACCC’s legal costs, among other orders.
Clorox cooperated with the ACCC during its investigation and the legal proceedings, made admissions, and agreed to make joint submissions with the ACCC to the court, including on the appropriate total penalty and other orders.
Clorox discontinued the products in July 2023, after it became aware the ACCC had started investigating, but before the ACCC started court proceedings.
A spokesperson for Clorox said GLAD Australia takes seriously its obligations to package and market its products with claims that are accurate and substantiated.
"While the ACCC and the court recognised that Glad did not intend to mislead consumers, we respect this outcome and see this as an opportunity to further enhance our practices and reaffirm our commitment to offering products that help reduce environmental impact and meet consumers’ evolving needs," the spokesperson said.
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