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What does a green-claim breach actually cost?
How to use this page
A comparison of published maxima, agreed penalties and commitment payments. A statutory cap is not a typical fine. A donation extracted by a commitment is not a finding of infringement. A class settlement is not a public-law penalty. Figures are as stated in the cited source, not converted into a single currency league table.
Three numbers that are not the same
Commentary often collapses three figures into “the fine”. The first is the statutory maximum — the CMA’s “£300,000 or, if higher, 10% of worldwide turnover” under DMCCA 2024 s. 182(6), or AGEC’s €3,000 / €15,000 for information-duty breaches. The second is the number a court actually ordered: A$8.25 million against Clorox Australia on 14 April 2025, an agreed penalty the Federal Court accepted. The third is a payment that is not a penalty at all: Decathlon’s €400,000 and H&M’s €500,000 donations in 2022, given so that ACM would impose no sanction. Comparing the third with the first as if they sat on one scale is a category error. This page keeps the categories apart.
Relief that changes artwork — injunctions, corrective notices, compliance programmes, claim withdrawal — is often the operational cost. The litigation tracker records those orders. This page records the money, and only the money that has a cited source.
The scale
| Forum | What the number is | Figure | What it reaches | Source in this library |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom, CMA | Statutory maximum for a DMCC monetary penalty (from 6 April 2025) | £300,000 or, if higher, 10% of the respondent’s worldwide turnover | A “relevant infringement” of consumer law, found by the CMA without a court. Green claims sit inside this general machinery, not a greenwashing statute. | UK DMCC article |
| European Union, UCPD as modernised | Floor for national maxima in CPC coordinated cases | At least 4% of annual turnover in the Member State(s) concerned, or at least €2 million where turnover information is unavailable | A floor for national maxima in coordinated cross-border enforcement, not a harmonised fine and not a typical national penalty. | Who enforces |
| France, AGEC information duties | Administrative fine ceiling (L.541-9-4) | €3,000 natural person / €15,000 legal person | Breaches of the information duties in L.541-9-2 and L.541-9-3 (Triman/Info-tri). Misleading claims attract the Consumption Code overlay separately. | France country report |
| France, carbon-neutrality advertising | Administrative fine (Decree 2022-538) | €20,000 natural / €100,000 legal, which may reach the total cost of the advertising operation | Breach of the Decree 2022-539 conditions. A different, and larger, scale from the AGEC mentions ceiling. | France AGEC article |
| Australia, Federal Court | Agreed penalty accepted by the Court, 14 April 2025 | A$8.25 million, plus costs contribution, compliance programme, corrective notice | ACCC v Clorox Australia: on-pack “ocean plastic” representations, June 2021–July 2023. Not the statutory maximum. | GLAD article |
| Netherlands, ACM | Commitment payment, not a fine (13 September 2022) | Decathlon €400,000; H&M €500,000, donated to sustainability causes; two years’ monitoring | Unspecified “Ecodesign” / “Conscious”-style claims. ACM imposed no sanction because the commitments were given. | ACM article |
| United States, FTC (precedent cited in this library) | Civil penalty in a fibre-claim settlement | US$5.5 million (Kohl’s and Walmart, 2022) | Textile fibre claims, not a packaging recyclability case. Cited because it is the FTC penalty-offense figure this library already uses for environmental marketing. | Who makes the rules |
| United States, class settlement | Settlement, not a public penalty | Keurig recyclable-pod class: US$10 million (settlement notice; final approval February 2023) | Qualifying language on recyclable K-Cup claims. A settlement binds the parties and defined products; it is not Green Guides doctrine. | Litigation tracker |
| Germany | No turnover-fine architecture of the CMA kind | Injunction and costs under UWG (competitor / Wettbewerbszentrale) | Katjes: unexplained “klimaneutral” held misleading. The cost is the injunction and the artwork change, not an administrative percentage of turnover. | Katjes article |
What the money does not buy
A paid penalty does not un-print the packs already sold. The who-enforces article records that corrective relabeling and market-wide claim withdrawal remain rare: fines price deception, but the mislabelled packages, in most concluded cases, had already been sold. A commitment donation does not create a precedent that the next trader is entitled to the same deal. An agreed penalty below the statutory maximum does not mean the maximum is theoretical; it means the parties settled the number.
Two French figures on the same pack are easy to confuse. L.541-9-4’s €15,000 ceiling is the information-duty scale for Triman. Decree 2022-538’s €100,000 (up to the cost of the operation) is the carbon-neutrality advertising scale. A pack that carries both a missing Triman and an unqualified “neutre en carbone” is in both machines. EmpCo, from 27 September 2026, adds the Member State’s transposition of the UCPD maxima, including the 4% floor in coordinated CPC cases. Stacking is the rule; substitution is not.
What a printer should take
| Field | Rule |
|---|---|
| Do not rank markets by headline fines | Germany’s injunction can retire a SKU as effectively as a CMA percentage. ACM’s “no sanction” still retired the claim. |
| Do not treat a commitment as a tariff | Decathlon/H&M donated to close a file. That is not a published menu. |
| Separate the French scales | €15,000 (AGEC information) is not €100,000 (carbon advertising) and is not EmpCo. |
| Artwork remedies outlast the cheque | Corrective notices, compliance programmes and claim-withdrawal undertakings are the part that reprints. |
| Caps are not typical outcomes | The CMA’s 10% figure is a maximum. Clorox’s A$8.25 million was agreed and below the ACL maximum. |
Traps
The first trap is converting every number into US dollars and sorting. The legal object differs: a cap, an agreed penalty, a donation, a settlement. The second is reading ACM’s 2022 donations as proof that Dutch law is cheap. The claims came down. The third is assuming that because Katjes produced no fine, unexplained “klimaneutral” is a tolerable German risk. The BGH has named the practice misleading. The fourth is ignoring sell-through: a 2025 penalty can attach to 2021–23 packs that are no longer printable and no longer in the warehouse.
References
Figures are taken from the Atlas articles cited in the table, which quote the underlying instruments or official announcements. This page does not re-retrieve those primary texts. DMCCA s. 182(6), Decree 2022-538 as summarised by the ecological-transition ministry, the ACCC media release of 14 April 2025, ACM’s 13 September 2022 commitment decisions, and L.541-9-4 are the source files.
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, c. 13, s. 182(6) Monetary penalty cap.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 23 August 2026).
ACCC (2025) Clorox ordered to pay $8.25m…, 14 April.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 23 August 2026).
ACM (2022) Commitment decision for H&M regarding sustainability claims, 13 September.. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 23 August 2026).
Note on sources and verification
No figure on this page is a conversion or an estimate. Where a row says “at least 4%”, that is the Modernisation Directive’s floor for national maxima in CPC coordinated cases, as characterised in the who-enforces article — not a typical fine. The Kohl’s/Walmart US$5.5 million figure is the FTC environmental-marketing penalty this library already cites; it is not a packaging-recyclability case and is labelled as such. The Keurig US$10 million figure is a class settlement, not an FTC order. German UWG costs are not quantified because the BGH press release does not state a money judgment.
Last verified: 23 August 2026.