The ACCC is suing a major burger chain — and it's not about packaging

Most small business owners think greenwashing risk lives on a product label — recycling arrows, "eco-friendly" stickers, a leaf next to the logo. The ACCC's latest Federal Court case is a reminder that the risk lives anywhere a business makes an environmental or "giving back" claim. Including a Tuesday burger promotion.

What actually happened

On 16 June 2026, the ACCC filed Federal Court proceedings against Grill'd Holdings, alleging that its "Tree Day Tuesday" campaign misled customers about when their purchases would trigger a donation to tree-planting projects run with environmental organisation Greenfleet Trust.¹

The campaign ran from January 2021 to April 2024. Across 26 separate advertisements — on social media, on Grill'd's website and in-store — the ACCC alleges Grill'd represented that it would donate $1 from every burger bought on a Tuesday toward tree planting.²

The numbers the ACCC has put on the record are the striking part:

• Over 5 million burgers were bought on Tuesdays during the relevant period.
• Only around 4% of those purchases actually qualified for a donation under the campaign's undisclosed conditions.
• Even for loyalty program members — the customers most likely to have read the fine print — only around 17% of Tuesday burgers qualified.²

The proceedings are brought under sections 18, 29(1)(g) and 29(1)(m) of the Australian Consumer Law — the general prohibition on misleading or deceptive conduct, plus specific prohibitions on false representations about the benefits of goods or services and about the existence of a promotional condition. The ACCC is seeking declarations, pecuniary penalties, costs and other orders. The allegations have not yet been determined by the court.¹

Grill'd is entitled to defend the proceedings and nothing in this article should be read as a finding of contravention.

Why this is bigger than "eco-friendly" labels

Most of the ACCC's headline greenwashing cases so far have been about product-label claims. Clorox Australia was penalised $8.25 million in April 2024 over "ocean plastic" claims on GLAD bin liners.³ Edgewell (Reef sunscreens) and Australian Gas Networks are the other recent named actions.⁴ All three were about what a manufacturer printed on packaging or published as marketing about the product itself.

Grill'd is different. There is no "eco" claim on the burger. There is no sustainability logo on the packaging. The alleged conduct is a promotional and charity claim — "buy this today, we give to this cause." That means the same consumer protection laws that catch a misleading recycling symbol also catch:

• "Part of every sale supports [cause]" posts on Instagram or TikTok.
• "We plant a tree for every order" checkout messaging.
• "Round up for the reef" point-of-sale prompts.
• Loyalty terms that promise environmental donations under conditions the customer never sees clearly at the point of purchase.
• "Proudly supporting [charity]" claims in email footers or in-store signage.

If the average customer would take away a different impression from the claim than what actually happens in your business, the conduct is exposed under section 18 of the ACL — regardless of whether you intended to mislead anyone.⁵

The wider enforcement picture in 2026

This case does not sit on its own. It follows a line of ACCC and ASIC greenwashing actions that have hardened the enforcement environment for Australian consumer-facing businesses:

• Clorox Australia — $8.25 million Federal Court penalty in April 2024 for misleading "ocean plastic" claims.³
• Vanguard Investments Australia — $12.9 million ASIC penalty in September 2024 for misleading ESG exclusion claims.⁶
• Edgewell Personal Care — Federal Court proceedings over "reef-friendly" sunscreen claims.⁴
• Australian Gas Networks — Federal Court proceedings over "renewable gas" advertising.⁴

The ACCC has confirmed that misleading environmental and sustainability claims remain a compliance and enforcement priority for 2026–27, with a stated focus on consumer-facing retail sectors.⁷

Treasury has also consulted on lifting maximum penalties under the Competition and Consumer Act — proposals under discussion include a top-end figure of up to $100 million per contravention where turnover-based calculations would produce that outcome, in addition to the existing "greater of $50 million, 3× benefit, or 30% of adjusted turnover" formula.⁸

What this case means for small Australian businesses

Grill'd is a national chain — but the lessons scale directly down. Take these five actions this week:

1. List every "we give back" claim you're currently making. Social posts, checkout pop-ups, in-store signage, email footers, loyalty terms, About pages. Include claims from the last two years still live in your feed or Google cache.
2. For each claim, write down the actual trigger. Is the donation per purchase, per qualifying purchase, per member purchase, capped monthly, subject to a minimum spend, only during a promotional window? If the trigger doesn't match the wording, the wording is the problem.
3. Move every condition next to the claim. Fine print in a linked terms page is not a fix. The ACCC and the courts assess the overall impression. A qualifier the customer will never see does not qualify the headline claim.
4. Get written proof from your charity partner. If you say "$1 from every burger goes to X", you should be able to produce a signed partnership agreement, an invoice trail, and a monthly reconciliation of dollars promised vs dollars paid.
5. Diary a review date. Environmental and charity claims age badly. Set a calendar reminder to re-verify every live claim at least every 12 months — and when the promotion changes.

The plain-English rule

A useful way to sanity-check any promotional environmental or charity claim before it goes live: if 1,000 average customers read this claim and then found out exactly how the promotion works, would any of them feel they'd been misled? If the answer is anything other than a confident "no", the claim needs to be rewritten before it's published.

Frequently asked questions

Where to go from here

Related reading: Is greenwashing illegal in Australia?, why the ACCC isn't just targeting large corporations, and the current list of Australian enforcement examples.

A good next step is to run every live "we give back" and environmental claim on your site through a structured check — that's exactly what our free Sprout Check scan does, flagging the specific wording and tying it back to the ACCC principle it engages.