Latest / Best of Business / Rebecca Styles: Consumer NZ Investigative Team Lead on the organisation's investigations into greenwashing
Transcript
- 0:09Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk zed B.
- 0:12Speaker 1: Follow this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
- 0:16Speaker 2: Let's talk about greenwashing. This on the back of an
- 0:18Speaker 2: Australian court has ordered glad owner Clorox to pay eight
- 0:22Speaker 2: point twenty five million dollars for fossil more misleading representations
- 0:26Speaker 2: about bags partly made or of recycled ocean plastic. The
- 0:29Speaker 2: offending garbage bags were partly made of Indonesian plastic source
- 0:33Speaker 2: from communities that were miles away from any shoreline. To
- 0:36Speaker 2: chat about this more, we're joined by Rebecca Styles, Consumer
- 0:39Speaker 2: NZ Investigative team leader Rebecca Good.
- 0:42Speaker 3: Afternoon him any relation to Harry Styles? I wish, I wish, Hey,
- 0:52Speaker 3: Rebecca Styles. What is green washing? So?
- 0:56Speaker 4: Basically, greenwashing is a misleading claim under the Fair Trading Act. So,
- 1:01Speaker 4: in particularly for greenwashing, it's a pright that makes itself
- 1:04Speaker 4: appear better for the environment than other similar products on
- 1:07Speaker 4: the shelves.
- 1:08Speaker 2: What are the punishments of a company is caught green washing?
- 1:12Speaker 4: Well, for New Zealand's penalties are actually quite light in
- 1:15Speaker 4: comparison to the big pine that Floric Scott so under
- 1:18Speaker 4: the Fair Trading Act, it's six hundred thousand dollars fine,
- 1:23Speaker 4: So there's quite light for it, especially for these big
- 1:26Speaker 4: multinational companies, and it's not much of a deterrent to
- 1:29Speaker 4: stop greenwashing. So we would just support a regulator upping
- 1:34Speaker 4: those fines. And upping the fines mean that it's more
- 1:37Speaker 4: roof while for their time and energy to actually take
- 1:39Speaker 4: these prosecutions so that it becomes a big