Yes. The harms of greenwashing are really substantial.
As I mentioned, they're very different from other misleading and deceptive claims. You know that if you buy a product such as a razor, and they say it's going to last, if it doesn't last or it doesn't work well, obviously it's easy for you to spot that and to know.
The issue with greenwashing is, as I mentioned, that consumers have no means of verifying these claims. They often simply do not have the necessary understanding, for example, of how carbon offsets work or what net zero or carbon neutrality means. Most people do not understand scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 emissions. You call a product “net-zero”, but of course 80% of the emissions are being released at the tailpipe.
This is a huge issue.
We also know that the green claims, as I mentioned, are impacting the environment for everybody. Companies are saying that they are greening their practices, and they're not. This means that the Competition Act is designed to deal with what are sometimes called “market externalities”, and pollution is one of the biggest externalities. It's sometimes said that climate change is the greatest market failure known to humanity.
Companies say they're green, but they're continuing to pollute. We know this harms us all—