Why 'we care about the planet' is no longer enough — what Australian customers actually expect

Two things are happening at the same time

The first is regulatory. The ACCC has named "misleading sustainability and environmental claims" as a compliance and enforcement priority in successive statements, including its 2025–26 priorities.¹ Its December 2023 guidance, Making environmental claims: A guide for business, sets out the eight principles the regulator uses when assessing whether a claim is misleading under the Australian Consumer Law.²

The second is commercial. The same vague language that attracts regulatory attention is the language Australian consumers say they trust the least. The risk to brand reputation now sits alongside the risk to compliance — and they tend to surface together.

What the Australian consumer research shows

The Australian Government's Climate Active programme commissioned consumer research published in 2023 looking at how Australians respond to environmental claims. The research found that consumers actively look for specific, verifiable information — named certifications, measured figures, third-party programmes — and that broad "green" language reduces rather than increases trust.³

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission's 2022 review of greenwashing in the funds sector reached a related finding from the regulator's side: where sustainability claims weren't backed by clear disclosure of methodology and scope, consumers couldn't reasonably evaluate them, and the gap was where the regulator acted.⁴

Why "we care about the planet" backfires

The phrase is a statement of values, not conduct, and on its own it isn't a claim the ACCC would normally treat as misleading. The problem is what it signals to the reader. When the rest of the page goes on to make specific claims — about packaging, emissions, sourcing — the heading frames everything below as factual. If those claims aren't substantiated, the heading made the gap larger, not smaller.

The ACCC's principle 5 (avoid broad and unqualified claims) and principle 1 (be accurate and truthful) both apply here. The same eight principles single out "general environmental benefit" claims — phrases like good for the planet, environmentally friendly, kind to the earth — as the category most likely to mislead.²

What Australian customers say they actually expect

Across recent Australian and global research the same patterns appear. Customers want, in roughly this order:

• A number with a unit and a period. "30% post-consumer recycled content (as at January 2026)" reads as evidence; "made with recycled content" reads as marketing.
• A named third party. Climate Active, the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL), Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA), B Corp — named certifications the consumer can look up.⁵⁶
• A defined scope. "Our Sydney warehouse runs on 100% accredited GreenPower" is more credible than "we use renewable energy", because the reader can place it.⁷
• Honesty about what isn't done yet. The ACCC's principle 8 — be direct and open about your sustainability transition — maps directly to what consumer research shows builds trust: acknowledging what is still being worked on.²

The compounding effect: regulators and consumers look at the same signals

When the ACCC assesses whether a claim is likely to mislead, it considers the impression created in the mind of the average consumer. When a consumer assesses whether they trust a brand's environmental claim, they ask similar questions: is there evidence? Is the scope clear? Is the language doing work the evidence can't back?

The practical consequence is that the same edits — replacing vague claims with specific, evidenced, scoped ones — reduce both regulatory and reputational risk at once. There is no version of "vague language but stronger trust" available.

What "good" looks like on a product page

A defensible, customer-trusted environmental claim tends to do four things:

• Names the specific attribute being claimed (recycled content, carbon footprint, certification) rather than a general feeling about the brand.
• Includes a measurable element — percentage, weight, certification number, scheme name — that the reader can verify or look up.
• States the scope and period the claim covers.
• Links to the underlying programme, register or methodology on the same page as the claim.

A short re-write exercise

1. Take the top five environmental sentences on your homepage and product pages.
2. For each one, write the version a customer would trust: specific attribute, number, scope, third party, link to evidence.
3. Compare the two versions side by side. The trusted version is almost always also the safer one under the ACCC's eight principles.

Related reading

See What is greenwashing?, the ACCC's eight principles, and our list of Australian enforcement examples.