The meeting – set for Wednesday, November 17 – was put in motion at the first meeting of the campaign’s steering committee in Sydney recently. The meeting discussed a range of issues for the 2010 campaign, preparations for 2011 and focussed on how to encourage even more industry contributors to join in the campaign.
Campaign organisers said the aim of next week’s meeting with the national competition and fair business regulator is to enlist its aid to inform businesses that it is illegal to mislead consumers and companies by claiming an environmental benefit where none exists, or incorrectly attacking paper and printed communications to try to sell their alternative products.
A campaign statement outlined, “Damaging our industry’s reputation and using untrue claims about our sustainability as the excuse for not providing customers with printed statements and other collateral, greenwashing has to be addressed, whenever we see it and no matter who is doing it.”
Organisers add that the campaign team is also taking on individual companies and organisations who “tell it like it aint”, with the aim to get them to stop trashing printing products and reputations.
The campaign has had recent correspondence with a bank, a carbon offsets company and a community littering campaign on this issue. Campaigners add that organisations that just don’t stop, even when confronted by the facts, have been referred to the ACCC for possible action under the Trade Practices Act.
In a recent letter to the ACCC, Bernard Cassell, who heads up the campaign, said false statements arise most often when paper based communications are compared to electronic communications in the public utterances of large companies.
He said, “In addition to the factual inaccuracy of the environmental and other impacts of many of the claims made about paper and printed communications, some of the companies require a fee from their customers to continue providing paper based statements.
“Without being glib, there is no evidence that charging clients for a paper based statement provides any environmental benefits.”
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