Week 43: Half a per cent of KLM passengers pay for cleaner fuel

Forbrukertilsynet published its rewritten guide to environmental claims in marketing on 21 September and updated it on 9 October, adding a changelog so businesses can follow further edits. It is an update to guidance the authority had been revising in public since late August. What is new is the enforcement position it now sets out.

The authority says it will not prioritise sanctions on stock produced well before the new rules commence, but only where all four conditions hold: the goods were made well in advance, compliance would be unreasonable or disproportionate, the business assessed the rules and began adapting in good faith and in good time, and the claim complied with the rules in force when it was made. It then closes the obvious gap. Where a non-compliant claim can be corrected practically and affordably, by covering it with a sticker for example, it must be, and the second condition fails.

The guide also confirms a slipped timetable. The Norwegian rules implementing Directive (EU) 2024/825 are described as likely to take effect in the first half of 2027, leaving Norway behind Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland, which have applied the ban since 27 September 2026.

ACM's Energiemonitor, published on 16 October, indicates that the 2027 heat tariff for an average household using 25 GJ a year will be roughly 25 per cent higher than this year, calculated from the first measurement point on 23 September. About 700,000 Dutch households are connected to heat networks and will meet the increase on 1 January 2027. Lighter users will see a smaller rise and heavier users a larger one, and the regulator warns the figure will grow if gas prices climb further.

The driver is wholesale gas at EUR 86 per MWh, the highest level since December 2022 and roughly double a year ago, even though gas consumption since 1 July is around 5 per cent below the same period last year. Some 3.7 million households on variable or dynamic contracts already feel the change monthly. In the past month fixed gas contracts rose almost 5 per cent and electricity offers by 5 to 8 per cent depending on contract length. ACM called on heat suppliers to raise tariffs only where it is genuinely necessary.

KLM told Dutch broadcaster BNR on 9 October that about 0.5 per cent of its passengers choose the voluntary sustainable aviation fuel contribution offered at booking, four and a half years after the option was introduced. A company spokesperson said that people say they find sustainability important, but that the airline sees that they then do not act on it.

KLM attributes part of the gap to low awareness and plans onboard promotional videos to raise it. The mandatory blending obligation that has applied to airlines since 2025 is doing the measurable work in the meantime. The disclosure comes from the airline itself rather than from a survey, which is unusual: voluntary take-up rates for green options are rarely published.

RepRisk's annual analysis, released on 6 October, counted 1,594 companies linked to greenwashing in the year to June 2026, up 28 per cent on the year before and the second consecutive rise after a 12 per cent fall in 2024. The composition of that figure is the finding. Transition-linked sectors, meaning alternative energy, utilities, mining, industrial metals and software, grew from 18 per cent of environmental linkages in 2022 to 29 per cent in 2026, while oil and gas fell from 17 to 12 per cent.

Financial services accounted for 305 linked companies, up 40 per cent year on year, and banks for 86, up 23 per cent, together about a fifth of all sector linkages. Biodiversity linkages rose from 162 in 2024 to 300 in 2026 and overtook climate, flat at 275, as the leading environmental issue for the first time in five years. One caveat belongs with any use of the data: the widely quoted 112 per cent five-year increase counts incidents, while the 1,594 counts companies, and the two measures are not interchangeable.

Ingka Group announced on 7 October that the IKEA second-hand marketplace had gone live in the UK and Ireland, joining Spain, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Sweden and Belgium, with Germany following on 14 October. Across the first six markets the platform recorded 15 million visits and 95,700 listings to 31 August 2026. About 25.5 per cent of marketplace users were new or reactivated IKEA Family members.

IKEA will connect its Buyback service to the marketplace in Spain and Portugal by the end of December, so that a seller can take an offer from IKEA while the listing is still running. Regulatory pressure on the same category is building in parallel. On 12 October Dutch trade press reported that the cabinet intends to make furniture makers and importers responsible for their products after use by 2030 at the latest, set against roughly 2 billion kg of furniture sold in the Netherlands each year and about 260 million kg given a second life.

The 2026 update of the Dashboard Supermarkten: Duurzaamheid en Gezondheid, built by Wageningen Social and Economic Research for the Dutch agriculture and health ministries, went live in the week of 13 October carrying 2025 data for sixteen chains. Among conventional grocers, Albert Heijn and Picnic lead on organic share of food revenue at about 5.6 per cent, with Lidl at 3.6 per cent and Nettorama at 0.4 per cent. Albert Heijn's organic private label reaches 6.6 per cent. Organic accounted for almost 4 per cent of Dutch supermarket food spending in 2025, up from just over 3 per cent the year before.

Targets now sit on the public record next to the outturn: Lidl 4 per cent by 2027, Jumbo 10 per cent of unprocessed fruit and vegetables by 2027, Picnic 11 per cent of fruit and vegetables by 2028, and Albert Heijn 10 per cent of private label by 2030. The gaps in the dataset carry information too. Dietary guideline sales shares are published for only five chains, and Poiesz supplied only aggregated buying group figures on palm oil and soy.

On 14 October the Swedish Consumer Agency and the Consumer Ombudsman issued an order against Allente over its telephone sales, attaching a penalty of SEK 3 million to each point criticised. According to the agency, sellers told consumers that they represented the consumer's existing provider or had a partnership with it, promised a cheaper streaming subscription than the one delivered, presented prices that were hard to follow, and were not truthful about the binding period.

The order lands against a standing agency position. In its report to government the agency proposed banning telephone sales outright, or failing that replacing the Nix register with an opt-in system, noting that complaints about misleading and aggressive marketing run markedly higher for this channel than for others, and that subscriptions and electricity contracts are among the products most often sold this way.