Date: 17 April 2025
Source: Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

The Federal Court of Australia has ordered Clorox Australia Pty Ltd (Clorox) to pay a total penalty of $8.25 million for making false or misleading representations to consumers that certain Clorox products were partly made of recycled ‘ocean plastic’. This decision followed court action initiated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in April 2024.

Clorox sells a range of consumer products under the GLAD brand, including garbage bags and kitchen tidy bags. Between June 2021 and July 2023, it breached Australian Consumer Law by representing on the front of the packaging of its GLAD to be GREEN kitchen tidy bags and garbage bags (Products) that they were made from 50% ocean recycled plastic.

The 2.2 million products sold with this packaging during that period were not made entirely from recycled plastic waste collected from the ocean or sea. Instead, they were made from about 50 percent plastic waste collected from communities in Indonesia with no formal waste management systems, located up to 50 km from a shoreline...