Courts crack down on flood of climate-washing’ attempts

Cases challenging truthfulness of corporate climate commitments’ rise

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NEW YORK - A "climate-controlled" sausage. New trousers labelled "recycled". A "sustainable" airline ticket.

More and more, big brands are using taglines like these to cater to their green-minded customers.

And more and more, they are under fire from courts and regulators for making climate promises they cannot keep.

Researchers at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in 2023 identified "an explosion of 'climate-washing' cases" using existing national laws and rules.

Between 2020 and 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the number of cases challenging the "truthfulness of corporate climate commitments" more than doubled, their tally found.

In 2024, this dynamic is playing out in several countries.

In Denmark, a national court in March told Danish Crown, the country's biggest pork producer, that it is misleading to label its pork "climate-controlled", though it declared that it is fine to assert that Danish pigs "are more climate friendly than you think".

In Britain, also in March, the Competition and Markets Authority looked into the climate claims of several fast-fashion brands and concluded that it is misleading to stamp a green leaf on a product and call it "recycled" without specifying how much of its content is actually recycled.

A court in the Netherlands prohibited KLM from using the slogan "fly responsibly" in its advertisements.

In the US, New York State's Attorney-General Letitia James sued the meat multinational JBS for making "sweeping representations about neutralising its emissions in the coming years, but offering "no viable plan".