French NGO files court complaint over Adidas, New Balance greenwashing

BRUSSELS – French environmental group Zero Waste France has filed a complaint with the courts of Strasbourg and Paris accusing Adidas and New Balance of “deceptive marketing practices.” The NGO claims the sports giants are greenwashing via their vague and misleading marketing slogans such as “solution against plastic waste,” “favouring the environment” and “End plastic waste.”

In the complaint, Adidas and New Balance are accused of communicating “shamelessly and disproportionately on commitments” related to the environmental while in practice they “change almost nothing to their production model.” It is also claimed that, [Some slogans] are associated with certain products of the brands “without saying a word about the environmental impact of recycled polyester or the technical impossibility of its infinite recycling.”

“It is time for justice to take up the scourge of greenwashing and for fast-fashion brands to understand that they are illegal when they claim that selling sneakers made from recycled materials helps fight plastic pollution,” said Alice Elfassi, legal manager of the NGO…

Made in France highlights slogans such as ‘Made to be remade’ and ‘End plastic waste’, which it claims Adidas is wrongly using to incorrectly claim products reduce the carbon footprint of those who buy them. It suggests that, in particular, ‘FutureCraft Footprint’ sneakers are sold as a way to “preserve the planet,” without saying anything about the environmental impact of recycled polyester or the technical impossibility of its infinite recycling.

The NGO claims that New Balance’s ‘standard’ green leaf – used on 351 products put on sale on the brand’s website – is based on the presence “50% or more” of materials from “environmentally friendly sources”. This phrasing, they claim, is a “great blur covering a multitude of realities that do not always respect the criteria that the brand has set itself.

It states: “These false environmental claims, likely to mislead consumers about the environmental impact of products and the environmental commitments of brands, are part of the misleading commercial practices prohibited by French law (Articles L. 121-2 et seq. of the Consumer Code). This is a crime, punishable by two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 euros, increased if the practice concerns environmental arguments.

“As the Jury of Advertising Ethics rightly pointed out in an opinion aimed at an Adidas advertisement, the argument of reducing plastic by marketing products composed of recycled plastics is false. Indeed, at the end of their life, the products will inevitably be discarded. If they are not recycled, they will feed the plastic waste stream and contribute to the resulting pollution. This is all the more true with recycled polyester, a material mainly used by sports brands: it is a very polluting material in production and whose use degrades it into microplastics, a disaster for human health and biodiversity.”