Research looks into environment claims from advertisers

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Consumers are increasingly thinking about the environmental impact of a product when they're choosing between brands. Marketers are responding by making lots of claims about the sustainability of their merchandise. But when does green advertising become greenwashing?

Transcript

00:00 So, this is research done by the Australian Centre for Automated Decision Making and Society

00:06 in partnership with the Consumer Policy Research Centre.

00:09 Basically what they've done is look at thousands of Facebook ads that make environmental claims

00:14 in some way.

00:16 We're not suggesting any of these are illegal ads or anything like that, but when you lay

00:19 them all out on the table in front of you, you get a really good sense for the kinds

00:23 of language that they use and often how not very useful it is for consumers.

00:29 Across these thousands of ads, more than 20,000 times donated to this research program.

00:34 Have a look at the most common words that were being used.

00:38 I think we can show them now.

00:40 Words like 'clean', the most common word in this data set of ads making environmental

00:44 claims.

00:45 'Green', 'sustainable'.

00:47 In isolation, those words don't really mean a whole lot.

00:50 Often you'll find they're using words like 'cleaner' than a competitor, but it kind of

00:53 begs the question as to 'cleaner than what exactly?'

00:56 It's all in very vague and ill-defined terms.

00:59 'Recycled', 'recyclable', but it doesn't say what in the product is recyclable.

01:04 That along with other tactics that advertisers are using like colour palettes, often employing

01:11 forest green, nature imagery, ocean blue colour palettes and my favourite, the delightful

01:17 earthy beige ads, all to kind of give you this vibe of environmentalism without necessarily

01:23 backing it up or justifying it.

01:25 The other thing that we saw a lot in these ads is an interesting use of emojis.

01:31 I think we can show you the most common ones there as well.

01:34 Emojis like the sun, like a green tick, like the earth emoji.

01:40 Often these emojis are being used almost as punctuation in ads rather than to make any

01:45 particular point.

01:46 The one I'm most interested in is the recycling loop, which was the fourth most common one

01:51 on the list.

01:52 That has a meaning.

01:53 It has a meaning when it's used on brand packaging, but here it was often used just to sort of

01:57 signal environmental credibility.

01:59 The researchers say really when you put all of that together, what you're creating is

02:03 a green halo effect, giving your product the vibe of environmentalism, but really not saying

02:10 how.

02:11 It's up to the consumer then to be the detective to try and work out what these claims mean.

02:16 Sometimes you'll find them on the brand or the company's website, sometimes you won't.

02:20 What you'll often find is the same claim being made by two different companies doesn't always

02:25 necessarily mean the same thing.

02:27 That's a bit of a problem for a consumer that wants to know what's an environmentally friendly

02:32 product to buy, how can I minimise my environmental impact when I make my purchasing decisions.

02:38 The fact that these ads are so vague means it's really hard to do that.

02:41 Yeah, sure is.

02:42 Now, what are regulators then doing about it?

02:44 The ACCC and ASIC, I should say, have both taken a real interest in this.

02:46 This has been an enforcement priority for the ACCC, the consumer watchdog, since mid-year.

02:52 Even this week they announced a court-enforceable undertaking with a yoghurt manufacturer called

02:57 Moo.

02:58 They had been advertising their products as ocean plastics, sorry, the containers the yoghurt

03:03 was coming in as ocean plastic.

03:04 It turned out it was actually plastic resin being collected from coastal areas of Malaysia.

03:10 So they've agreed to change that packaging to say ocean-bound plastics.

03:14 But it's a really hard thing to police because these terms are so vague as to be meaningless.

03:18 How do you kind of say this is misleading and deceptive advertising?

03:22 That's the sort of standard of the law in Australian advertising.

03:25 So the ACCC has come up with a draft set of principles for advertisers.

03:29 They see this as an issue that needs to be tackled.

03:32 Those guidelines will be finalised before Christmas, we expect.

03:36 They do say things, you know, basically giving them some guidelines for the kinds of evidence

03:42 you might need to back up claims, especially when they're things about carbon neutral goals

03:47 into the future, aspirational claims, how do you justify those.

03:51 And I think from them we might see more enforcement taking place once there's sort of a bit of

03:56 a clearer guideline in place.

03:59 And the researchers behind this work, they just think that the law isn't working well

04:02 enough here.

04:03 Yeah, it's really, when you look at all of these ads you kind of go wow, there's really,

04:06 like there's more than a regulator could possibly tackle with.

04:10 Other jurisdictions, the European Union, the United Kingdom, they're looking at more proactive

04:15 ways of tackling this kind of an issue.

04:20 And the researchers behind this think, yeah, really there is a bit of a gap in the law

04:24 in Australia.

04:25 Let's have a listen to Professor Christine Parker from the University of Melbourne.

04:28 The law is really the wrong way round.

04:31 At the moment we have laws against misleading conduct.

04:36 But what that means is that the business, we have to wait for the business to make a

04:41 misleading claim and then somebody has to notice that it's misleading, make a complaint

04:46 to the ACCC and the ACCC has to investigate it.

04:50 And so that puts a lot of onus on the consumer and is quite costly for the ACCC.

04:56 So what might that look like in practice?

04:58 Well Christine Parker suggests perhaps an outright ban on some of these really vague

05:02 terms.

05:03 'Spy clean' really doesn't mean a whole lot and maybe it should just be banned from use

05:06 by advertisers.

05:07 Now that's something for the government to consider.

05:10 They're thinking about this.

05:11 There is a Senate inquiry looking at greenwashing and whether our laws are adequate.

05:14 But that's not going to report back until mid next year, Gemma.

05:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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