Polish logistics services giants Allegro, DHL, DPD and InPost have misled consumers with false environmental claims, Poland’s competition regulator UOKiK said on July 29.

The authority accused the four companies of using phrases such as “green fleet”, “zero-emission” and “climate neutral” to describe their services – without substantiating those claims. UOKiK President Tomasz Chróstny said such messaging can discourage customers from supporting genuinely sustainable services. 

If confirmed, the violations could lead to penalties of up to 10% of each company’s turnover per offence. 

“Green slogans cannot be empty promises. If a company claims to be environmentally friendly, it must prove it with facts – not clever emissions maths, catchy slogans or symbolic actions,” Chróstny said.

E-commerce platform Allegro was charged with two counts of misleading consumers. The company’s “We plant trees” campaign promised a tree for every ten parcel pick-ups via Allegro One, its network of automated parcel lockers. 

In 2024, however, Allegro added a requirement for users to give online consent they want to plant trees, announcing the change only once, in an email sent during Christmas marketing flurry. Many users remained unaware, UOKiK said, while trees were planted in advance regardless of customer activity anyway, with earlier plantings retrospectively linked to users who had met the conditions.

Courier DHL received four charges. The company’s promotional messaging claimed that redirecting home deliveries to parcel points was an eco-friendly alternative. UOKiK found that DHL’s fleet remained predominantly high-emission and that no evidence supported the suggestion that customers even walked to pick up parcels. 

UOKiK also criticised other campaigns – such as river clean-ups or urban beekeeping – as local and sporadic. A supposed bee-protecting project amounted to placing five hives on the firm’s Warsaw headquarters, UOKiK said.

DPD was charged with six counts. It advertised slogans like “green vehicle fleet”, “environmentally neutral deliveries” and “zero emissions”, which the authority said could mislead if they ignored the full delivery chain or the broader scale of operations. UOKiK said environmental claims must consider the entire lifecycle of electric vehicles and be clearly substantiated.

Three charges were brought against logistics operator InPost. The firm’s claim to deliver “zero-emission e-commerce” was undermined by a fleet that was largely not low-emission, UOKiK said. The regulator also flagged the company’s use of parcel locker slogans and carbon calculators, which it said were based on vague assumptions and lacked reliable data.

UOKiK is also running nine additional investigations into potential greenwashing practices across the fashion, retail, transport and e-commerce sectors, it said.