Clorox Australia, the manufacturer of Glad-branded kitchen and garbage bags, is in court for allegedly making false or misleading representations.
The ACCC alleges that Clorox represented that its Glad Kitchen Tidy Bags and Garbage Bags were comprised of 50% recycled ‘ocean plastic’ collected from an ocean or sea, when that was not the case.
Instead, these kitchen and garbage bags are alleged to be partly made from plastic that was collected from communities in Indonesia up to 50km 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,” says ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb.
“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.”
A Clorox spokesperson tells Retail World that Glad takes seriously its obligations to package and market its products with claims that are “truthful and substantiated”.
“We are considering the ACCC’s concerns raised by their court proceedings announced today,” they said. “The proceedings relate to the 50% Ocean Bound Plastic Recycled Bags product line only (Kitchen Tidy small, medium and large, and Garbage large and extra large), which was discontinued by Glad in July 2023.”
