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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