‘Green’ ad claims on the rise as the climate debate heats up

20 December 2006

If predictions are right, climate change will have dire ramifications for all of us on both an economic and social scale.  Recently, the drive to raise awareness of the environment and what the public can do to help reduce the impact of climate change has gained momentum.

The corporate world is getting in on the act.  Industry, keen to show that it is working hard to be part of the solution, as opposed to the problem, is investing money in a whole host of environmentally friendly initiatives.  Corporate social responsibility is a major facet of modern big business and promoting ‘green’ credentials can be a useful exercise in gaining some positive PR and providing a socially responsible focus for company employees.

In what is becoming a growing trend, advertisers are increasingly appealing to consumers’ sense of eco-friendliness by making claims about the climate-saving properties of their products.  But, in their rush to be ‘green’, advertisers have sometimes fallen foul of the advertising codes and been told by the ASA to ensure that the ‘green’ claims they make are more than just hot air.

Carbon footprint or putting your foot in it?

Scottish & Southern Energy Group (SSE) recently distributed a leaflet that encouraged consumers to join its ‘power2’ scheme as a means of cutting CO2 emissions.  The leaflet claimed that the scheme was “A GOOD USE OF YOUR ENERGY … we supply cleaner hydro-electricity to the National Grid … we plant trees to balance out the CO2 that your gas heating and household waste produces.”  The ASA received a complaint that the claim about planting trees to offset the CO2 emissions was misleading and could not be substantiated.

In its defence, SSE stated that for every consumer who signed up to the advertised scheme it would plant enough trees to absorb the amount of CO2 produced by the household waste production and gas consumption of an average UK household.  Furthermore, SSE said it had entered into a three-year agreement with the World Land Trust (WLT) to ensure 150,000 growing trees were planted each year in the UK or worldwide.  SSE provided a breakdown of the average annual gas consumption and the domestic waste produced per household in the UK and how much CO2 that produced.

Although the ASA acknowledged that SSE could provide evidence of large-scale tree planting and how much CO2 the average UK household produced, SSE had not provided evidence to show the amount of CO2 that would be absorbed by the trees that were planted.  Because it could not determine whether the trees planted would balance out the CO2 produced by UK households, the ASA concluded that SSE could not substantiate its claim.  The ASA told SSE not to use the ad again without revising it and to consult the CAP Copy Advice team for help in amending the ad.

Click here to read the adjudication.

Click here to read a related article about supermarket green claims