Nearly 80% of millennials and over 60% of Gen Z and Gen X are willing to pay more for sustainable products, according to the Business of Sustainability Index. However, fraudulent sustainable product claims have increased steadily over the last five years, signaling that consumers are questioning whether these products are actually environmentally friendly.
This raises the question: If the upward trend in fraudulent sustainability product claims continues, will consumers’ appetite for these products lessen and the number of lawsuits increase?
One development may encourage companies to live up to the sustainability claims on their products, thus possibly retaining their customer base and deterring additional lawsuits: the Federal Trade Commission’s pending updates to its Green Guides. The Green Guides provide clarification on how consumers are likely to interpet environmental marketing claims and how marketers can substantiate and qualify these claims to avoid deceiving consumers.
To figure out how many products’ sustainability claims are facing legal challenges, I conducted a Bloomberg Law dockets keyword search of federal fraud complaints (nature of suit code 370) for allegations that products made false or misleading sustainability claims in advertising, labeling, or marketing. I then sorted my results into the following three discrete categories:
A serious legal fight has now started, and it is pulling big names into the spotlight. Brian Harpole, who once handled security for Charlie Kirk, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Candace Owe...