Businesses seeking to appeal to environmentally conscious
consumers must ensure their claims can be substantiated. The
Australian competition regulator, ACCC, recently began proceedings
against Clorox for making false or misleading representations that
the GLAD kitchen and garbage bags were partly created with recycled
ocean plastic.
The ACCC alleged that Clorox represented that the GLAD kitchen
and garbage bags were made up of 50% recycled ocean plastic. The
headline 'ocean plastic', the wave imagery on the packaging
and the use of blue coloured bags created the impression that the
bags were made from plastic waste collected from the ocean or
sea.
The ACCC investigated and found that the representations were
misleading and false because the bags were made with plastic that
was collected from communities in Indonesia up to 50kmfrom a
shoreline, and not from the ocean or sea.
