Going Green around the Gills

Mark Honeychurch - 11 November 2024

Is Going Green like Breaking Bad, where you take a wrong turn in your life and start making dubious life choices? Because the owners of the Go Green Expo, held at different locations around the country each year, seem to have made a really bad life choice when they decided to let alt-med nonsense into their Expo right from its inception.

The Skeptics in Wellington have made an effort to turn up to the Go Green Expo pretty much every year since it began back in the early 2010s, and we’ve documented and submitted complaints about many of the exhibitors, and even emailed and talked on the phone with the organisers about our concerns and how much of a wretched hive of scum and villainy the event usually is. Here’s just one of the emails we sent, back in 2015:

Hello,

I recently had a look at the list of the exhibitors you had at your Auckland expo in April, and was a bit concerned that I recognised quite a few companies as having been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority for making misleading claims in advertising.

Fluoride Free NZ had 6 ASA complaints upheld against them just last year for making misleading claims about community water fluoridation.

Ionza has had 2 ASA complaints upheld against them in 2013 and 2014 for making misleading therapeutic claims and exploiting consumers’ lack of knowledge.

Vital Chiropractic had 2 ASA complaints upheld against them last year, and another one in 2011, all for making misleading therapeutic claims.

Wendyl’s recently had an ASA complaint upheld against it after it was found to be misleadingly claiming its products were all “100% natural” and “chemical free” when in fact this was not true.

I’m also a bit concerned by some of the other exhibitors, such as the well-known anti-vaccine advocacy group “WAVES NZ” and particularly a “College of Natural Therapies and Homeopathy”. Especially considering the recent statements from the likes of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the New Zealand Medical Association that homeopathy is a placebo and it’s unethical to prescribe it.

Given this concern, I was hoping you could tell me what processes the Go Green Expo has in place to prevent exhibitors from making misleading claims?

Sincerely,

Mark Hanna

Alas, none of our efforts appear to have made a substantial difference to how the Expo operates, although we do now have a slew of successful Advertising Standards Authority complaints to our name. Often companies are reluctant to put their most egregious claims in full view of the public, preferring to place them on banners and in pamphlets that are only used at events like this, and also making claims verbally, where they are mostly exempt from our current legislation. So attending events like this can help to expose some of the worst behaviour of these companies.

This year Bronwyn, Richard, Katrina and I managed to visit over the course of Saturday afternoon to sit in on some of the talks and have a good poke around the stands, asking questions and trying out the free samples. You can read about what we “learned” in this week’s newsletter, where I try to give an overview of some of the worst pseudoscience I witnessed, and both Katrina and Bronwyn focus on one particular worrying stand, an MLM that’s new to NZ, and is selling some of the daftest products I’ve seen in a long time. We also have two bonus articles - one from Al Blenney about the Climate Intelligence Foundation, and one from me about our recent ghost hunting experience - which was one of the most fun pseudoscience experiences I’ve ever had.