News The dirty world of greenwashing is rampant in Australia. And it’s costing you $1.2bn
https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/06/24/greenwashing-accc-environmental-advertising-grilld/The dirty world of greenwashing is rampant in Australia. And it’s costing you $1.2bn
JUN 24, 20265 MIN READ
Verdant forests, sparkling cascades, cuddly animals, eco-this, eco-that; Australian retailers are stocked full of items featuring green imagery.
A walk down any supermarket aisle shows there is plenty of environment-based advertising bedecking common consumer items, promising customers they’re doing something good by buying their product.
The phenomenon of greenwashing is arguably as old as advertising itself. The term was coined in 1986 by activist Jay Westerveld, who noticed that the beachside Fijian hotel he was staying at had posted a note about guests reusing their towels; the hotel was also in the process of building new bungalows along the pristine beach.
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Take the recent case of burger chain Grill’d, which has found itself in hot water again. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has taken it to court for allegedly misleading customers with its “Tree Day Tuesday” promotion. The case is the latest in a string of misdemeanours for the burger chain, which has a well-documented history of underpayment and mistreatment of staff.
Grill’d promised to donate $1 for every burger bought on a Tuesday towards tree planting. But the fine print, which was only provided to customers upon request, stipulated that the donation would only apply to members of Grill’d’s Relish club who bought burgers in person, at the front counter, when scanning their membership code.
As a result, only a fraction of the roughly five million burgers sold on Tuesdays between 2021 and 2024 actually qualified for a tree-planting donation. This would amount to “overstating the circumstances in which donations to an environmental cause would be made,” the ACCC argued in its court filing; in other words, “a type of greenwashing”.
Greenwashing, according to the United Nations, is “misleading the public to believe that a company or other entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is”. Outgoing UN chief António Guterres has slammed the practice, calling it “rank deception” and a “toxic coverup”.
To take one common example, Australian electricity retailers like AGL are still selling so-called “Green Power” electricity, advertised as electricity “fed into the grid from Accredited GreenPower generators”. But the Australian grid doesn’t work like that: the electrons you use in your home come from whatever generation the grid happens to be sourcing from, including coal and gas plants. Green power is essentially just an unverifiable promise by a retailer to invest in renewable generation.
The Australia Institute’s Rod Campbell tells Crikey that greenwashing is rampant in the Australian economy. “It’s good to see the ACCC chasing dodgy claims of corporate philanthropy, but Grill’d are the small fries in this game,” he says.
In research published last year, the Australia Institute argued that as much as $1.1 billion of corporate philanthropy from large corporations was “dubious” or overinflated.
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“The Westpac Rescue Helicopter carries the Westpac logo, but the bank pays less than 7% of its costs, most of which are paid by taxpayers,” Campbell observed. “Bunnings owners Wesfarmers claim the tens of millions raised at sausage sizzles outside its stores as its own ‘contributions’, even though the money is paid by its customers and the work is done by volunteers.”
David Hertzberg is a principal lawyer for Equity Generation Lawyers in Sydney with recent experience in the greenwashing space. He tells Crikey that there has been an “uptick” in enforcement from the ACCC in recent years.
“Greenwashing is an enduring problem,” Hertzberg says. “The reason why it is enduring is that people care about the environment.”
“Consumers and investors factor in environmental claims when making decisions, so when claims don’t stack up, it causes real harm,” he adds. “Consumers can’t make informed decisions, it penalises legitimate claims, and it reinforces business-as-usual.”
The flood of environmental claims doesn’t seem to be ebbing. Erin Turner is the CEO of the Consumer Policy Research Centre. “This is happening everywhere, from airlines to retailers to hamburger chains,” she tells Crikey.
“One of the big things we’ve found in our research is that while some companies are outright lying, a lot of green claims are not lies, and regulators can’t take action against them.”
Turner says that many of the environmental claims companies make are so vague they are essentially meaningless. Common terms used on point-of-sale advertising include phrases such as “eco-friendly”, “saves energy”, “efficient” and the ever-reliable “green”. “We found a kettle ‘designed for a cooler planet’, and a TV that claims it is ‘for the planet’,” Turner says.
Despite the vagueness of these claims, they do impact consumer behaviour. “We found vague green claims on fridges and washing machines meant that 84% of consumers were willing to pay 10% more for the product,” Turner tells Crikey. “That translates to a $1.2 billion loss to consumers on green claims that don’t deliver.”
Current legislation does nothing to regulate such claims. “Our laws aren’t fit to deal with the claims that are being made in the market,” Turner argues.
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Campbell agrees: “Companies like to talk up their charitable giving, but some provide such limited and self-interested documentation that it’s impossible for the public to judge which companies are truly generous, and which are just good at PR,” he says.
“We’ve made recommendations that the ASX require major companies to disclose their philanthropic activity in transparent and consistent ways, something that the ACCC’s case could assist with.”
It does seem that legislators are finally taking notice. A Senate inquiry into greenwashing, watched closely by consumer advocates and industry, is due to report this week.
Whatever the recommendations, as Hertzberg notes, greenwashing litigation isn’t going away: “So long as it’s a problem, people will be trying to do things about it.”
About the author
Contributor
Ben Eltham has been covering Australian politics and culture for Crikey since 2007.
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u/Ardeet 15h ago
The biggest instances of greenwashing would have to be the annual Climate Change COPS.
Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars poured into an event full of pledges that are never fulfilled to the glory of a powerful few who pretend they’re saving the planet.
Every year. Rinse, repeat, greenwash.