AUSTRALIA | The ACCC has instituted proceedings in the Federal Court against Clorox Australia Pty Ltd, the manufacturer of GLAD-branded kitchen and garbage bags, for allegedly making false or misleading representations that certain kitchen and garbage bags were partly made of recycled ‘ocean plastic’, in breach of the Australian Consumer Law.
The ACCC alleges that Clorox represented that its GLAD Kitchen Tidy Bags and Garbage Bags were comprised of 50 percent recycled ‘ocean plastic’ collected from an ocean or sea, when that was not the case.
The ACCC alleges that these GLAD kitchen and garbage bags were instead partly made from plastic that was collected from communities in Indonesia up to 50 kilometres from a shoreline, and not from the ocean or sea.
“We allege that the headline 'ocean plastic' statements and wave imagery on the GLAD bag packaging, and the use of blue coloured bags, created the impression that these GLAD bags were made from plastic waste collected from the ocean or sea, when this was not the case,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.
“We are concerned that, by its alleged conduct, Clorox deprived consumers of the opportunity to make informed purchasing decisions, and may have put other businesses making genuine environmental claims at an unfair disadvantage.”
“This action reflects our enforcement priority to take action against businesses making false or misleading environmental claims. Increasingly consumers choose the products they buy based on their environmental impact, and in doing so they must be able to rely on the environmental claims made by businesses being accurate,” said Cass-Gottlieb.
Both of these products were reportedly withdrawn from supply to retailers from July 2023.
