A “climate-controlled” sausage. New pants labeled “recycled.” A “sustainable” airline ticket.
More and more, big brands are using taglines like this to appeal to their green-minded customers. And increasingly, courts and regulators are blaming them for making climate promises they can’t keep.
Researchers at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment identified last year “an explosion of ‘climate washing’ cases,” using existing national laws and regulations. Between 2020 and 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the number of cases challenging the “truth of corporate climate commitments” more than doubled, found their tally.
This year, this dynamic is playing out in several countries.
In Denmark, a national court in March told the Danish Crown, the country’s largest pork producer, that it was misleading to label its pork as “climate controlled,” even though it declared that it was fine to insist that the pigs that Danish is “more climate friendly than you think. .”
In Britain, also in March, the Competition and Markets Authority, a regulatory agency, looked into the climate claims of several fast-fashion brands and concluded that it misleading stamp on a green leaf in a product and calling it “recycled,” without specifying how much of its content is actually recycled.
A Dutch court KLM is prohibited from using the slogan “fly responsibly” in its ads.
And in New York, State Attorney General Letitia James sued the meat multinational, JBS, for manufacturing “sweeping representations” about neutralizing its emissions in the coming years, but offers “no practical plan.”
These cases show how campaigners are using a wider range of national and international laws to slow climate change. They have sued governments for failing to protect their citizens’ constitutional rights to life, and occasionally won, as in a case in Germany. They have used human rights law to challenge governments, most recently winning a case in a European regional court. They sought to use international treaties, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to force governments to curb emissions.
Complaints against alleged greenwashing are now gathering steam.
Another database, maintained by Columbia University Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law since 2011, found that among climate lawsuits filed against private entities, the largest number of lawsuits — a total of at least in 77 – the saying misleading advertisements.
These complaints also reflect a business need. Companies that sell everything from toothpaste to soup are trying to meet changing consumer needs.
In the United States, sales of consumer products labeled green or sustainable are grow twice as fast as those that don’taccording to research from New York University’s Stern School of Business, with younger and more affluent consumers more likely to buy those products than others.
“This is a market opportunity, and companies must know how to make claims truthfully,” said Tensie Whelan, director of NYU’s Center for Sustainable Business.
Lawsuits can be a double-edged sword. They can hold companies to account, but they can also make companies trying to reduce their emissions reluctant to market themselves as such.
“The easiest thing for companies is to say, ‘I’m not going to say anything about this or I’m going to break what I’m doing because it minimizes the risks,'” said Branda Katan, a lawyer who represented KLM in court at The Netherlands.
JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, is among the most closely watched in these cases in the US In response to the latest complaint by the office of Ms. James, JBS told The New York Times that it disagrees with the allegations and that it is “to help feed a growing population while using fewer resources and reducing the environmental impact of agriculture.”
A press spokesperson for the Danish Crown did not return an email seeking a response to the Danish court’s decision. On its website, it explains that “climate controlled” refers to measures taken by pig farmers to reduce emissions from their operations.
Airlines have become popular targets of greenwashing lawsuits. An advocacy group filed a complaint against the more than a dozen airlines for allegedly violating European Union consumer protection laws, arguing that the offer of offsets was misleading because the Emissions savings from offsets are “uncertain.” (An airline industry group responded to the complaint by saying “while offsets currently play a role, their importance will diminish” as airlines build more efficient fleets and develop alternatives to jet fuel, a heavy pollutant.).
Meanwhile, three separate cases are pending in US courtsagainst three different airlines over their use of terms like “carbon-neutral” and “sustainable.”
Energy companies are relatively new targets. In Canada, a climate advocacy group called Client Earth filed a complaint in April against FortisBC for its advertising campaign promoting what it calls “renewable natural gas,” or methane extracted from farms of animals and landfills. Lawyers with the Stand Environmental Society, an advocacy group, argue that the ads are deceptivebecause most of the gas that FortisBC supplies to its customers for home heating comes from fossil fuels, while a small portion comes from gas obtained from landfills and farms.
FortisBC released a statement saying this disagree with the plaintiffs allegations. “FortisBC takes climate change very seriously and is working to help BC meet its climate goals,” the statement read.
