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Australia: what did the ACCC’s eight principles and the GLAD case change about on-pack claims?
Status
In force as Australian Consumer Law, not as a labelling statute. The ACCC’s December 2023 guide is the Commission’s view of ACL ss 18 and 29 as applied to environmental claims. It is guidance. The Federal Court orders of 14 April 2025 in ACCC v Clorox Australia Pty Ltd are an adjudicated packaging case about the words and pictures on a kitchen-tidy bag.
50% Ocean Plastic RecycledPrescribed, banned or litigated wording — not production artwork
Made using 50% Ocean Bound Plastic*Prescribed, banned or litigated wording — not production artwork
Wording lock-ups record prescribed, banned or litigated phrases for identification and commentary. They are not production artwork and do not grant permission to print.
Guidance is not a code
Australia has no Green Guides and no AGEC-style word-list. Environmental claims on packaging are ordinary misleading-or-deceptive conduct and false representations under the Australian Consumer Law. What the ACCC added, on 12 December 2023, is a published view of how that law reads when the representation is environmental. The eight principles are: make accurate and truthful claims; have evidence to back up your claims; don’t hide or omit important information; explain any conditions or qualifications on your claims; avoid broad and unqualified claims; use clear and easy-to-understand language; visual elements should not give the wrong impression; be direct and open about your sustainability transition (ACCC, 2023a). The Commission presents them as obligations under the ACL plus a view of good practice, not as a parallel statute (ACCC, 2023a; 2023b).
The principles follow an October–November 2022 internet sweep whose findings were released in March 2023 (ACCC, 2023a). They are therefore an enforcement document as well as a teaching document: they tell traders what the Commission will treat as the ordinary-consumer reading of a green claim, including the reading of pictures. Principle 7 — visual elements should not give the wrong impression — is the principle the GLAD pack then illustrated in court.
The GLAD pack
On 14 April 2025 the Federal Court ordered Clorox Australia Pty Ltd to pay A$8.25 million for false or misleading representations that certain GLAD kitchen and garbage bags were partly made of recycled “ocean plastic” (ACCC, 2025). Clorox admitted that between June 2021 and July 2023 it represented, on the packaging, that the products were made of at least 50 per cent recycled plastic waste collected from the ocean or sea, when that was not the case.
The ACCC’s account of the artwork is the part that matters for this library. The front of small, medium and large kitchen-tidy bags, from June 2021 to about 13 November 2022, carried “50% Ocean Plastic Recycled Bags” and “Made using 50% Ocean Plastic*” around an image of a wave, overlaid on a blue bag. The back stated that the bags were “made from 50% ocean recycled plastic” and, in an asterisk, that the plastic was “ocean bound plastic that is collected from communities with no formal waste management system within 50 km of the shore line” (ACCC, 2025). From about 6 March 2022 the front was updated to “Made using 50% Ocean Bound Plastic*”. Garbage bags, from about May 2022 to July 2023, still led with “50% Ocean Plastic Recycled Garbage Bags” on some faces while using “ocean bound” on others.
The Court held that these features “connoted a relationship between the Products and the ocean” and that the “reference to ‘green’ on the Packaging connoted environmental-friendliness”, and treated those as “important contextual matters in assessing the contravening conduct”. Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb’s statement on the penalty is the Commission’s own gloss on principle 7: “Clorox gave insufficient consideration to what ‘ocean plastic’ meant to an ordinary consumer, particularly in light of the blue colour and wave imaging on the packaging” (ACCC, 2025). The asterisk did not govern the front. The 50 km “ocean-bound” definition, which is the definition used by the OBP scheme mapped in the ocean-bound article, did not convert a marine picture into a land-based leakage claim. The pack is the case; the scheme is not a party to it.
Orders went beyond the penalty: an ACL compliance programme, a corrective notice, and a contribution to the ACCC’s costs (ACCC, 2025). The A$8.25 million figure is an agreed penalty accepted by the Court, not the statutory maximum.
What the case teaches artwork
| Field | Rule |
|---|---|
| Governing law | ACL ss 18 and 29. No packaging-specific environmental-claims statute. |
| ACCC document | Making environmental claims: a guide for business, 12 December 2023. Eight principles. Guidance, not a code. |
| Ordinary-consumer reading | Front-of-pack words plus colour plus imagery. A back-of-pack asterisk does not automatically qualify a dominant marine claim. |
| “Ocean plastic” vs “ocean-bound” | The first is a marine-collection claim. The second is a 50 km land-based leakage category. Printing the second in the visual language of the first was the contravention. |
| Evidence | Principle 2: claims must be backed. Consumers “have limited or no ability to independently verify the accuracy of the claims made on packaging” (Cass-Gottlieb, ACCC, 2025). |
| Do not | Treat the ACCC guide as optional brand advice. Treat an OBP or similar certificate as a licence to say “ocean plastic”. Rely on an asterisk to un-say a wave. |
Traps
The first trap is assuming that because Australia has no labelling statute, on-pack environmental claims are lightly policed. GLAD is a packaging case with an eight-figure penalty. The second is assuming that a technically accurate “ocean-bound” definition on the reverse cures a front that a consumer reads as ocean-collected. The Court and the Commission both read the pack as a whole. The third is treating the eight principles as a checklist that, once ticked, binds the Federal Court. They bind the ACCC’s enforcement discretion more than they bind a judge; the ACL remains the cause of action. Comparative and future-dated claims, treated in the comparative article, sit inside principle 8 (be direct and open about your sustainability transition) as well as inside the ACL’s ordinary rules on representations as to future matters.
References
ACCC (2023a) ACCC releases eight principles to guide businesses’ environmental claims, 12 December.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
ACCC (2023b) Making environmental claims: a guide for business (publication page).. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
ACCC (2025) Clorox ordered to pay $8.25m in penalties for misleading ‘ocean plastic’ claims about certain GLAD products, 14 April.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
ACCC (n.d.) Environmental and sustainability claims.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 22 August 2026).
Note on sources and verification
The eight principles and the 12 December 2023 publication date are from the ACCC media release of that day. Pack wording, dates, the 50 km asterisk, the wave/blue-bag description, the Court’s “connoted a relationship with the ocean” language, the penalty, the additional orders and the Chair’s statements are from the ACCC media release of 14 April 2025. The guide is characterised as guidance applying the ACL, not as a statute, on the Commission’s own description. No millimetre specification exists for a litigated claim and none is offered. This article does not re-try the admitted facts; it records the Commission’s and the Court’s published account of the pack.
Last verified: 22 August 2026.