The Global Greenwashing Report #6

Welcome to this edition of The Global Greenwashing Report. Each week I'll bring you the latest news, views, and trends in the world of greenwashing.

This week, we're focusing on some of the big regulatory moves from the halls of power. As you'll see, not everything (unfortunately) is taking a forward trajectory.

This Week’s Greenwashing Big Three

1. The Shot: Singapore's New Greenwashing Guidelines

Singapore has taken decisive action against greenwashing with new guidelines released this week by the Competition and Consumer Commission. The move addresses a growing problem: a 2022 study found that over half of online product claims were vague with insufficient detail to support them, while 14 percent used technical language that made it difficult for consumers to understand or verify claims.

The timing is significant. These guidelines arrive as businesses increasingly face scrutiny over environmental claims, with terms like "eco-friendly," "green," and "sustainable" becoming marketing staples without necessarily reflecting genuine environmental benefits.

Five Principles to Navigate Green Claims

The CCS framework centres on five core principles:

1. Claims must be true and accurate

2. Claims must be clear and easily understood

3. Claims must be meaningful

4. Claims must be accompanied by material information

5. Claims should be supportable by evidence.

The principles aren't revolutionary, but they codify what should already be standard practice. Claims need verification before being made public, must be periodically reviewed, and should avoid misleading consumers through vague statements or imagery. When companies make comparisons with other products, those comparisons must be fair and substantiated.

For businesses making environmental claims, the message is clear: specificity matters. Generic statements about being "green" or "sustainable" without concrete evidence won't cut it anymore. Companies must present supporting information accessibly and early, clearly stating any assumptions, limits, or conditions underlying their claims.

2. The Chaser: Are Singapore’s new greenwashing guidelines a guardrail or gag order?

Singapore's new guidelines are meant to help businesses avoid greenwashing. On the surface this looks like a great move. But might these new guidelines actually backfire?

Fresh data from the UN Global Compact Network Singapore tells a troubling story. Public disclosure of sustainability targets has plummeted from 58% in 2023 to just 33% in 2025. Three-quarters of companies are delaying announcements or revising targets. We're essentially witnessing greenhushing in real time.

Put this together with the Government’s five-year delay of climate reporting requirements and new greenwashing guidelines. The result is a clear message to companies that they must be careful what they say.

I've seen this all play out before here in Australia. Similar regulatory moves created a chilling effect. Companies got spooked. Sustainability teams went quiet. Genuine progress became invisible because the risk of saying the wrong thing outweighed the benefit of transparency.

But here's what makes this all particularly frustrating. By the numbers, 82% of Singapore firms with targets say they're on track or ahead of schedule, internal verification is up 12 percentage points, and 91% of companies say sustainability is still a priority. The work is happening. The progress is real. But it's being kept secret.

This is the real paradox of global greenwashing regulations. They’re designed to prevent false claims but are inadvertently silencing true ones.

The solution isn't to abandon guidelines, of course. It's to remember that stakeholders don't expect perfection. They just want you to be honest. A company that says "we're at 30% of our target and here's why it's harder than we thought" builds more trust than one that says nothing at all.

And all that keeping quiet does nobody any favours. According to the 2025 Sustainability Perceptions Index, brands are leaving $145 million in opportunities on the table due to greenhushing.

Singapore has an opportunity here to buck the trend and create guardrails without eliciting gag orders. And if there’s any place in the world that knows how to innovate novel solutions successfully, it’s certainly the Garden City.

3. Bailing Out the Big Polluters

Less than a month after releasing their 2035 climate targets, the Australian Government is busy bailing out some of the country's biggest polluters.

Just this week, Switzerland-based Glencore secured $600 million from Australian taxpayers to keep its Mount Isa copper smelter running for three more years. The justification? 600 direct jobs. That's roughly $1,000,000 per job. The kicker? Parent company Glencore Holdings reported a taxable income of $5.9 billion but paid no tax at all. And they’re not alone.

Western Australia’s pumped over $308 million into Griffin Coal since it went into receivership in 2022 after collapsing under more than $1 billion dollars of debt. Taxpayer funds designed to keep the mine afloat are now being used, in part, to repay its offshore owners. Delhi-based Sindhu Trade Links, the largest creditor of the mine, collects about $1.5 million a month.

According to the AFR, Federal and state governments have already agreed to provide lifelines to the British subsidiary Whyalla steelworks in South Australia, two smelters owned by Singapore-owned Nyrstar, and Tomago, partly owned by Anglo-American giant Rio Tinto.

There’s a pattern. Foreign-owned companies extract Australian resources, shift profits to tax havens like Switzerland and Singapore, pay minimal or zero Australian corporate tax, then demand taxpayer bailouts when things go sideways.

Plus, using public money to keep coal mines and smelters operational is a stunning bit of cognitive dissonance given Australia’s 2035 climate commitments.

One of the most alarming parts is that the government is exploring using the National Reconstruction Fund - meant to build Australia's industrial future - to prop up legacy polluters. That's like using your super to fix a car you're planning to scrap.

And the bailouts aren’t even worth it. Contrary to what vested interests scream, these aren't strategic industries we need to protect. They're operations that obviously can't survive without massive public subsidy. We should be letting capitalism take its course. The job numbers sound impressive until you realize we could pay these workers full salaries to do literally nothing and still spend less money. Or better yet - invest that money in actual transition programs, retraining, and new industries that don't require perpetual life support.

The bottom line is Australian taxpayers are bankrolling foreign corporations that dodge taxes, pollute heavily, and demand rescue when convenient. This isn't about supporting workers. If it were, we'd invest in genuine transition programs. This isn't about national interest. These are foreign-owned operations extracting Australian wealth. This is corporate welfare, pure and simple.

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Other Major ESG News

• Financial Times, US Demands EU Dismantle Green Regulations in Threat to Trade Deal

• Wild Earth Guardians, Enormous “Exxon Profits / NM Pays” Banners across Albuquerque as Organizers Confront Greenwashing from Balloon Fiesta to the Roundhouse

• Business of Fashion, Shein, Hit With Big Fines, Boosts Internal Controls

• Retail Detail, Shoe Retailer Deichmann Guilty of Greenwashing

• Kelley Drye, Court Approves $1.5 Million Settlement in Greenwashing Case

• THG Studios, The Conscious Traveller (reveals 57% of consumers believe travel brands are guilty of greenwashing!)

• AOL News, West Virginia AG Leads Multistate Probe Into Big Tech 'Greenwashing' Claims

• Eco-Business, Climate Litigation Surges Globally, Taking on Greenwashing and Carbon Offsets – But Asia Lags

• Apple Insider, Apple Watch & Mac Mini No Longer Listed As Carbon Neutral After Greenwashing Concerns

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Your Motivational Minute

I get that a lot of what you just read makes it seem like nothing's happening. But that's hardly the case. There is a lot of forward momentum when it comes to saving the planet and society. Your role in furthering that work cannot be overstated.

One key piece of that work is to be your authentic self. When you consider 80% of online content comes from just 10% of users (and even worse, studies show up to 1/4 are bots), that means the loudest voices often dictate what most people believe, even if they’re wrong.

The counter is for those of us with knowledge and experience, who are actual humans, to be louder and more authentic.

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There's just three short months to go until Australia's mandatory climate reporting begins. Is your organisation ready to prove every sustainability claim you've made? I help companies build the systems infrastructure that turns compliance obligations into competitive advantages. Visit johnpabon.com to discover how authentic capability development can help your organisation capitalise on the new regulatory environment.

Value in these insights? Share with your board and leadership team. The organisations that prepare systemically, not just procedurally, today will be the ones leading their sectors tomorrow.