But a year into this government’s mandate, and approaching five years since the onset of the cost-of-living crisis, the details don’t live up to the packaging.

The section starts off strong, announcing the government’s intention to launch a “Whole-of-Government Competition Plan.” In theory, this is an excellent idea, championed by the former Biden administration down south and by competition experts Vass Bednar and Denise Hearn at home. Across the federal government, there are powerful levers to promote competition. Have them work together in concert and the multiplier effect would be substantial. But announcing your intention to launch something is different from launching something. For now, all we know is that the minister of finance and national revenue will be giving more detail “in the coming months.”

Saying you want more competition and doing the work to upset the powerful interests that most certainly do not want more competition are two different things.

– Keldon Bester, executive director, Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project

More worrying than the delay is the core of this intended-to-be-launched plan, which appears to be nothing more than a bland commitment to reduce red tape and get the government out of the way. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, possibly under Paul Martin, Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau.

No weird trick

The problem is that many of the monopolies that haunt our lives are crafted not in red tape, but in kilometres of cables, football fields of warehouses and hangars full of airplanes. There is no one weird trick to fix the Canadian economy, and the frictionless callout against red tape (which is bad) in favour of competition (which is good) isn’t it.

If the federal government wants to shake up competition, especially in the markets over which it has the most direct pull, it needs to go to the heart of how control is exercised in those markets.

Step one is to beef up the Competition Bureau and appoint a new commissioner of competition with clear marching orders to put a halt to harmful takeovers and move quickly on the oligopolized markets that are often invisible to everyday consumers. The government needs to direct our telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to double down instead of backing away from the regulations that allow independent competitors to build businesses on the infrastructure of incumbents.

Groceries are a clear test case

Riding on growing energy for public grocery stores, the federal government needs to invest in structural alternatives that put food on Canadian tables, including the unsexy but important food-processing and -distribution sectors.

Ottawa also needs to take public steps to restore consumer confidence that they’re getting a fair deal with existing competitors. Twice now, investigations by CBC’s Marketplace have found grocers systematically overcharging shoppers for meat products, even after commitments from the companies to rectify the behaviour. This is an egregious breach of consumer trust, yet the current maximum fine of $15,000 for an offending company is meaningless. Public denouncement, stricter penalties and stepped-up enforcement from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are other concrete ways the government can make clear that markets need to be working for Canadians.

RELATED STORIES

Mark Carney’s ‘people’s fund’ puts small investors on the front lines of economic defence

Canada’s climate innovators need a faster path to market

As war sends oil profits surging, calls grow louder for a windfall tax

The federal government should also be partnering with the provinces – which have a clearer line of sight toward changing business practices – and leading a unified push against harmful practices like the property controls that allow grocers to dictate where their competitors set up shop. Manitoba is leading the way here, and its experience will certainly provide lessons for other provinces looking to deliver more choice for their citizens.

Still at the starting line

All together, these suggestions still represent only the first step toward a deep commitment to improving competition and making markets work for Canadians. Heck, even cut some red tape while you’re at it. But a generic enthusiasm for competition is no substitute for the real political fights that need to happen to make Canadians’ lives more affordable.

Of course, there’s a less pessimistic read of the announcement, which is that the government has the right prescription and is setting up for a bold push to deliver more competition for Canadians.

But saying you want more competition and doing the work to upset the powerful interests that most certainly do not want more competition are two different things. So far, it’s not clear that this government is prepared to do the latter.

Keldon Bester is the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project and a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

The post Cutting red tape won’t defeat Canada’s monopolies. Here’s what will. appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But then a man with bushy black eyebrows and a heavy Eastern European accent took the stage. Speaking in measured terms, the nuclear physicist Edward Teller – known for his central role on the Manhattan Project – rained on the entire parade. Fossil fuels, he explained, could not be relied on for the energy of the future. Not only was their supply finite, but they were also “contaminating the atmosphere.” The carbon dioxide released in their combustion was causing a “greenhouse effect” that threatened to melt ice caps and submerge coastal cities. 

“I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe,” Teller warned. 

Big Oil listened. And carried on. 

Doing so, however, has required promulgating the fiction that fossil fuels are an instrumental force for good, amidst mounting evidence to the contrary. Today the PR industry propping up the sector is considered one of the biggest obstructions to climate change mitigation. As the medium goes digital and the message becomes more subtle and diffuse, pro-oil marketing is being baked into our social media feeds and infiltrating climate conferences. But efforts are ramping up to shut it down.

From Kyoto to TikTok

Over the last half-century, Big Oil’s spin doctors have used every trick in the book to keep the public on side. Initially the mood was oddly boastful. Three years after Teller’s warning, Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) trumpeted in its ads, “Each day Humble supplies enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier!” As climate science advanced, oil companies and trade associations went to every length to undermine it, from running full-page advertorials in The New York Times by front groups like the Informed Citizens for the Environment in the 1980s, to using climate-branded lobby groups to stop the U.S. from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. 

But as catastrophic wildfires, floods, droughts and hurricanes began to capture the headlines, climate denialism waned. A twofold strategy replaced it: virtue-signal green in public, lobby black in private. British Petroleum paved the way. Rebranded as Beyond Petroleum in 2001, the company went on to run a campaign, devised by Ogilvy & Mather, that introduced the notion of the “carbon footprint” (not yet in common parlance) and encouraged individuals to reduce their own, even providing a calculator on its website for the purpose. Subtly, the onus of carbon reduction was shifted from the company onto the consumer. 

As climate awareness grew, Big Oil’s advertising budgets exploded. Between 2008 and 2016, the five  biggest oil companies (ExxonMobil, BP-Amoco, Chevron-Texaco, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips) collectively spent an average of US$217 million on advertising annually, a sixfold increase from two decades earlier, according to a 2019 paper in the journal Climatic Change. 

In the last decade, the PR push has moved deeper online, engaging all the tools of social media and cyberculture to persuade today’s youth that fossil fuels are cool, fun and virtuous. Oil companies are working with gamers to integrate their logos into virtual racecourses and hiring digital marketing managers to run TikTok and Instagram channels that spool video reels featuring young people interacting with their brands. 

But it’s a tough sell to a climate-conscious generation that is more committed to reducing its environmental impact than any before it. “We’re seen as one of the bad guys,” BP admitted in a leaked presentation that it made to a group of PR companies in 2020, asking the marketing minds how best to make the company seem more “relatable, passionate and authentic” to the next generation, “the people with the biggest voice.” 

Their answer has been to rely heavily on the tactic of misdirection, training attention away from the product and onto nicer things: nature imagery and lifestyle motifs like sports and fashion. Shell in particular has made good use of influencers: online personalities who attract large followings on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X and, most recently, Twitch.

“When I was younger, I struggled with self-belief,” U.S. Open surfing champion Sage Erickson tells her 308,000 followers on Instagram. Saturated shots of the blonde beauty riding turquoise waves suggest that she has gotten over it. In the accompanying text, Erickson thanks Shell for allowing her to tell her story as part of its “Performance Unbound” series, which features short videos of young athletes achieving greatness in various ways. There is no evident connection to Shell or its products, beyond the little scallop-shell icon and the influencer’s gratitude. 

Shell has also sent British celebrities on global adventures to highlight the company’s investment in renewables. For a five-episode YouTube series launched in the lead-up to Earth Day 2023, former BBC presenter Dallas Campbell travelled the world to tout, in actorly British tones, the “exciting potential of hydrogen.” In 2017, Shell sponsored polar explorer Robert Swan and his son on an expedition to the South Pole to promote biofuel. Photos of the journey were beamed out on Shell’s Twitter account. American PR giant Edelman, which was behind the stunt, boasted on its website that the publicity reached 600 million people and made viewers “31% more likely to believe” that Shell is “committed to cleaner fuels.” 

Belief is what matters here; advertising aims to win hearts, not minds. By its own account, Shell invested some 14% of its total expenditure in 2022 in “renewables and energy solutions” – a figure that environmental groups say is vastly inflated. Either way, the amount is a marginal fraction of its total business.  A 2022 analysis by Harvard University and the Algorithmic Transparency Institute found that almost three-quarters of the social media posts by 22 leading oil and gas companies promoted green technologies – on which those same companies had, on average, invested less than 2% of their total expenditure in the decade previous. 

Cancelling oil industry greenwash

There’s a growing consensus that the PR companies involved in greenwashed campaigns need to be held to account. Addressing the UN General Assembly in 2022, Secretary-General António Guterres took aim at the “massive PR machine raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny.” Clean Creatives, an initiative founded in 2020 to break the PR industry’s support of fossil fuels, publishes an annual “F-list” detailing which agencies are working for which fossil fuel companies. This year’s worst offender, with 55 fossil fuel contracts, is the British holding company WPP, which, in a gross contradiction, has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions in its operations by 2025.

For companies in the business of image management, naming and shaming can be effective. More than 700 agencies in 38 countries have signed Clean Creatives’ pledge not to work with fossil fuel clients. But for many, oil and gas is their bread and butter. Founded in 1952, Edelman built its brand with clients like ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute. More recently, it was instrumental in greening up the image of the United Arab Emirates (UAE); the campaign, launched in 2007, laid the groundwork for the petroleum-exporting country’s successful bid to host COP28 last December. 

 Each day Humble supplies enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier!

 

– Humble Oil (Now ExxonMobile) advertisement in Life magazine, June 1962

Edelman remains intransigent. It dismissed a petition that circulated at COP26, asking it to cut ties with the fossil fuel industry. CEO Richard Edelman argued that oil companies need PR support through the energy transition and added that, since 2015, Edelman has refused to work with outright climate deniers.

“They claim, ‘We’re good corporate actors. We don’t need regulation,’” said Christine Arena, one of six executives who quit Edelman in 2015 after learning of the company’s deep involvement with the fossil fuel industry. She went on to testify before a 2022 U.S. congressional hearing into the role of PR companies in climate misinformation and obstruction. In conversation with Drilled podcaster Amy Westervelt, Arena calls the factual distortions, greenwashing and omissions that characterize fossil fuel advertising “uniquely harmful.” 

But they’re not without precedent. The tobacco industry used much the same tactics – and many of the same agencies – to promote its products. This parallel has served as inspiration for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), a coalition of medical doctors and concerned citizens that has petitioned  Ottawa to ban advertisements for fossil fuels, gas utilities and gas vehicles. Echoing the reasoning that led to Canada’s near-complete ban on tobacco advertising, CAPE cited, in an open letter in 2022, the impact of air pollution from fossil fuels: an annual death toll of somewhere between 15,000 and 34,000 Canadians, according to Health Canada. 

The coalition has also filed a greenwashing complaint with the federal Competition Bureau against the Canadian Gas Association’s promotion of gas as an affordable, sustainable and clean energy source, arguing that the production of natural gas in fact causes air and water pollution, while gas stoves have been shown to increase the risk of asthma in children. 

Marc Bishai, a lawyer with the Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement, a Montreal-based organization that offers legal expertise on environmental and climate-related issues, says CAPE’s medical tack is smart from a legal standpoint. But overall, he feels that Canada is profoundly ill-equipped to tackle the problems of green- and climate-washing. “It’s an exercise in Whac-a-Mole,” he says of a system that relies on complaints, rather than proactively monitoring the marketplace. Furthermore, he argues that Canada has to refine its standards for corporate claims, much as it has financial disclosure standards. There is still no regulatory consensus, for instance, on what conditions have to be met to label something “climate-neutral” or “net-zero.”

They claim, ‘We’re good corporate actors. We don’t need regulation.’

 

– Christine Arena, one of six executives who quit Edelman in 2015

In the last two years, at least three climate-washing complaints have been filed with the Competition Bureau. One was lodged against Shell Canada’s “Drive Carbon Neutral” campaign of 2020, which encouraged drivers to purchase carbon credits for nature protection projects as they tanked up. Greenpeace, which launched the complaint, challenged Shell’s emissions mathematics. In December, the Bureau said it was closing its investigation because Shell had pulled the advertising from its Canadian website and app, a move that Greenpeace celebrated. 

Meanwhile, jurisdictions with more specific standards have been decisive. In 2021, the Dutch Advertising Code Committee – which draws on a Sustainable Advertising Code – ordered Shell to discontinue the Dutch version of its “Drive Carbon Neutral” campaign, arguing that the neutrality claim could not be proven. 

The U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority, which expanded its guidance on green claims last summer, recently banned a Shell ad campaign promoting the company’s green activities on the basis that it “misrepresented the contribution that lower-carbon initiatives played . . . as part of the overall balance of a company’s activities.” The ruling was significant because it challenged the campaign not for what it said, but for what it failed to say. 

This is the kind of rigour needed to combat Big Oil’s powers of persuasion. The industry is on a roll. With its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has served the fossil fuel industry a silver tablet of record profits and heightened concerns about energy security, which it has used to justify prioritizing hydrocarbons over renewables. 

Climate Action Against Disinformation, a global coalition of organizations opposed to climate obfuscation, analyzed oil companies’ Facebook ads in the 10 months leading up to COP28. It found millions of dollars in ads steeped in “delayism,” implying that global energy insecurity and the high cost of living justified an expanded role for fossil fuels. 

In the last year, amid soaring oil and gas returns, Shell, ExxonMobil and BP all reduced their commitments to renewables. BP announced a US$1-billion annual increase in its investment in oil and gas for the rest of the decade, jettisoning its ambition of cutting oil production by 40% in that time period. In all, the International Energy Agency has forecast that 2023 will see global investment in fossil fuels increase by 11%, reaching its highest level since 2015. 

Many consider the UAE’s hosting of COP28, under the aegis of oil titan Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, proof that the fossil fuel industry and its marketing agencies have fully co-opted the climate conversation. Now more than ever, governments and regulators have to ensure that the conversation is shaped by transparency and facts and not profit-driven bluff.  

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer. 

The post How Big Oil’s spin doctors are influencing influencers appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Back in 1986, an ecologist on a research trip to Fiji reportedly coined the term “greenwashing” in an essay critiquing a beachfront resort’s towel reuse policy. Four decades later, greenwashed marketing claims, did not, it turns out, come out in the wash. They’ve permeated nearly every product category, from “carbon neutral” burgers and disposable cola bottles made with “plastic from the sea” to net-zero oil companies and ESG labels slapped on trillions of dollars in poorly regulated investment funds.

But the Wild West era may be coming to an end. As The Atlantic put it in March, “The world is finally cracking down on ‘greenwashing.’”

On May 11, the European Parliament voted to ban carbon-neutral claims that are based on carbon-offsetting schemes. At the same time, the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority also said it would begin stricter enforcement of “unqualified” carbon-neutral, nature-positive and net-zero claims; companies will now have to prove that offsets, which have come under heavy fire, are effective. Meanwhile, Gucci dropped the use of the term “carbon neutral” from its website this spring. EasyJet and JetBlue backed away from carbon offsetting schemes in December.

“Climate-related claims have been shown to be particularly prone to being unclear and ambiguous, misleading the consumer,” EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius told The Guardian. “We need to set things straight for consumers and give them full information.”

In North America, both agencies in charge of overseeing marketing claims are retooling their approaches. For the first time in a decade, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is revamping its Green Guides, guidelines for environmental advertising and labelling claims. The FTC first published the Green Guides back in 1992 to “help marketers avoid making misleading environmental claims,” which had flourished.

The agency only issues greenwashing fines every few years. In 2022 the FTC went after Walmart and Kohl’s for deceptively marketing rayon bedding, clothing and towels as being “eco-friendly and “made from bamboo” (the U.S. Textile and Wool Act requires that they be labelled as “made with rayon,” since bamboo is converted to rayon using hazardous air-polluting chemicals). The companies agreed to pay the FTC US$3 and $2.5 million, respectively, in penalties. Now environmental and consumer groups want the agency to go after a wider array of claims, including plastic companies claiming that their “advanced” and “chemical” recycling methods are sustainable, as well as financial products purporting to be net-zero or “Paris aligned.”

“The explosive rise of the ESG investment space has raised new questions about what constitutes fair and faithful marketing and disclosure around financial products and services,” said Americans for Financial Reform in an April letter to the FTC.

Across the border, the federal Canadian government has launched a review of the Competition Act after it became clear that the Competition Bureau, like its American cousin, has been hamstrung by limited enforcement powers and funding. In the meantime, the regulator has been more active than ever on the greenwash file. After fining Keurig $3 million for misleading coffee-pod-recycling claims last year, the Competition Bureau is currently investigating the climate claims made by Canada’s largest bank (RBC), six largest oil companies (operating under their umbrella organization Pathways Alliance) and the Canadian Gas Association, as well as a greenwashing complaint against North America’s largest forestry certifier (Sustainable Forestry Initiative).

“The Canadian government should set standards and enforce against greenwashing, not only for the good of consumers and the planet, but also so our marketplace is not distorted by false or confusing green claims.”

 

–Former environment minister Catherine McKenna

Still, agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have been accused of using a whack-a-mole approach to a widespread problem. While multiple studies have found that more than half of green claims are misleading, vague or unfounded, in Canada investigations are opened only after complaints are formally lodged by groups such as Ecojustice, Greenpeace and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

The EU’s proposed Green Claims Directive would deliver a stricter framework, one that former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna wants Canada to emulate in tackling greenwashing “head on.”

“The Canadian government should set standards and enforce against greenwashing, not only for the good of consumers and the planet, but also so our marketplace is not distorted by false or confusing green claims,” McKenna said in a press release.

In the U.K., industry insiders are hopeful. One senior brand advisor told The Guardian that “the era of unspecific claims such as ‘environmentally friendly’ is over.”

Depending on how this year in regulatory overhauls shakes out around the globe, they may be right.

Adria Vasil is managing editor of Corporate Knights and the bestselling author of the Ecoholic book series.

The post ‘Carbon neutral’ and ‘net-zero’ claims face global greenwash crackdown appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This might seem like typical fossil fuel industry marketing. But not to Canadian physicians, who are increasingly concerned about the climate-warming dangers of methane, the primary ingredient in natural gas production, and the health risks of burning natural gas in home appliances such as stove tops and water heaters. Rather than dismiss “clean gas” propaganda as the last gasp of a desperate industry, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) is fighting the industry’s climate claims with an ambitious bid to establish “greenwashing” as unacceptable – and maybe, eventually, illegal.

In November, the federal Competition Bureau announced it will investigate a complaint filed in September by six doctors, nurses and public health advocates who accused the Canadian Gas Association (CGA) of misleading consumers by aggressively promoting its products as “clean” and “affordable.” The complaint asked the bureau to force the CGA and its member companies (which include Enbridge, Epcor and TC Energy) to stop advertising natural gas as clean and affordable, issue a retraction and pay a $10-million fine.

While it’s unclear how long the bureau’s investigation will take, CAPE is gearing up for a battle, says campaign director Leah Temper. “We’re trying to de-normalize the fossil fuel industry, so there will certainly be a lot of pushback.”

But CAPE is also upping the stakes by lobbying Ottawa to include new regulations on greenwashing in its current overhaul of competition legislation. CAPE, which claims to represent 700,000 physicians, is also leading a campaign – along with the David Suzuki Foundation and other activist organizations – to convince the federal government to follow the lead of France in banning fossil-fuel advertising. The movement is gaining momentum: at COP27 in Egypt in November, a high-level UN group (led by former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna) released a report, Integrity Matters, that says “It’s time to draw a red line around greenwashing.”

Why are doctors leading this charge in Canada? They’re following the lead of physicians who launched grassroots programs to discourage smoking and ban tobacco ads 50 years ago, well before complacent national organizations and lawmakers started taking stands.

CAPE argues that fossil fuel marketing and promotion endangers human and planetary health in three ways: industry ads aim to stimulate demand for carbon-intensive goods and services at a time when a growing web of climate policies clearly require curbing demand; fossil fuel advertising fails to disclose known health and environmental hazards; and misinformation undermines public support for climate action.

The CGA responded to the Competition Bureau’s decision with a generic statement noting that it would cooperate with the inquiry and that “natural gas plays an important part in Canada’s energy mix.” At press time, the CGA had not responded to two requests for comment from Corporate Knights.

What’s next on CAPE’s agenda? Temper says the organization is eyeing a complaint about the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of oil sands producers that claims it’s on a net-zero path while also seeking government funds for expansion. And it’s considering other mechanisms, such as seeking injunctions against individual greenwashing campaigns or testing Canada’s self-regulating Ad Standards system. Mainly, though, Temper hopes this work will result in a broad ad ban that makes further complaints unnecessary: “We don’t want to keep playing ‘Whac-A-Mole.’”

The post Canadian doctors prescribe fines for natural gas ‘greenwashers’ appeared first on Corporate Knights.

One disturbing consequence of the pandemic has been the mountains of single-use plastic it has generated.

In January, Tennessee-based Eastman Chemical unveiled a bold initiative to tackle this problem with plans for a US$1-billion plant in France that each year will turn up to 160,000 tonnes of plastic waste currently sent to landfills or incinerators into brand-new packaging and textile materials. Some of the world’s largest users of plastic containers, such as Procter & Gamble, Estée Lauder and Danone, have signed up as suppliers.

The French plant – like a smaller one under construction in Tennessee – will use Eastman’s polyester renewal technology, which breaks down hard-to-recycle carpets, textiles and containers into their molecular building blocks, then reassembles the material into new plastics. The company claims that the process can be used repeatedly on the same materials with no loss of quality. It estimates that the combination of its technology and France’s renewable energy resources will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared with other recycling methods.

The company’s head of plastics, Scott Ballard, told a Tennessee TV station: “What we’re trying to do is make it easier … for governments to create infrastructure to recycle.

Because with this technology, that waste becomes valuable, [so] we can pay money for it as a feedstock, as opposed to them having to pay to dispose of it.”

Eastman’s project, which will benefit from French government incentives, is an encouraging sign that the fight against plastic pollution is gathering steam. Last November, a study for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that the pandemic has generated more than eight million tons of plastic waste, mostly from hospitals.

More than 70 prominent consumer-goods companies came together in January to call for a global treaty to fight plastic pollution. The signatories, including Unilever, Walmart, Ikea and Coca-Cola, urged governments to adopt a wide range of policies to “keep plastics in the economy and out of the environment, reduce virgin plastic production,” and decouple plastic-production fossil fuels.

Such initiatives are sure to face pushback from powerful fossil-fuel and chemical industries that supply the raw materials for plastics. They would be wise to recognize, however, that the tide is not moving their way. Projects like Eastman’s will hopefully persuade businesses in many other sectors that the future lies in ever more efficient recycling.

Zero: Keurig

Speaking of recycling… Coffee-machine maker Keurig boasts on its website that by using its K-Cycle program, corporate customers can fully recycle every one of its single-use coffee pods. By 2020, the Massachusetts-based pioneer of single-serve coffee makers had diverted 136 million pods, weighing more than 2.7 million kilograms, from landfills by composting the grounds and filters and recycling the plastic and aluminum packaging.

But there’s a snag for those of us who use Keurig pods at home. The company reached a settlement with Canada’s Competition Bureau in January over what the bureau described as “false or misleading” claims about the recyclability of K-Cup pods. Under the deal, Keurig agreed to pay a $3-million penalty, donate $800,000 to a charity focused on environmental causes, and cover the costs of the bureau’s investigation. It must also reword its claims about the pods’ recyclability, and change their packaging accordingly.

Within a few weeks of the settlement, Keurig Canada had put up a banner on its website, noting that “Keurig K-Cup pods may not be recyclable in your area; check with your local municipality for more information.” A link gave more details of the settlement.

Alerted by researchers at the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, the bureau found that Keurig pods are not widely accepted by municipal recycling programs outside British Columbia and Quebec. It also concluded that Keurig’s claims give the impression that coffee drinkers can prepare the pods for recycling simply by peeling off the lid and emptying out the grounds, when, in fact, some recycling programs require more steps.

“False or misleading claims by businesses to promote ‘greener’ products harm consumers who are unable to make informed purchasing decisions,” noted Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell. Such claims, he added, also hurt suppliers of rival products that are less environmentally damaging.

Of course, Keurig is not alone in promising more than it delivers. The University of Victoria group found that Toronto’s solid-waste department recovers about 90 tonnes of coffee pods annually from a variety of brands that clog its recycling system.

The Competition Bureau’s statement announcing the settlement ended on a note of appreciation for the company’s “voluntary cooperation in resolving this matter.” Even better, Keurig and other pod makers could avoid the problem by making only refillable pods.

The post Heroes and Zeros: Eastman Chemical vs. Keurig appeared first on Corporate Knights.