The Advertising Standards Authority (“ASA”) has published an updated version of its guidance on misleading environmental claims and social responsibility. This update follows a flurry of recent steps the ASA and its partner regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”), have taken in their ongoing efforts to curtail misleading “green” claims.
The ASA previously outlined, in its 2022 Annual Report, that it will continue to tackle misleading and socially irresponsible “green” claims as a priority. Most recently, the ASA has published a series of rulings across several sectors (energy and utilities, travel, and FMCG brands), indicating the ASA will continue to strictly apply UK advertising codes where there is evidence of misleading or socially irresponsible advertising concerning the environment.
Alongside the updated guidance, the ASA published a thought-provoking opinion piece in which it acknowledges the “binary choice” advertisers think they face when it comes to making “green” claims: choosing between “greenwashing” and “greenhushing”. The opinion piece goes on to note that making environmental claims should not be a choice; rather, it is about advertisers communicating accurately and with transparency.
The updated ASA guidance builds on themes addressed in the opinion piece, providing further examples of approaches that are likely to be unacceptable in individual marketing communications.
Most notably, the updated guidance considers how claims made in relation to businesses’ initiatives which are designed to reduce environmental impact may be in breach of UK advertising codes. The guidance highlights several factors that make such advertising claims more or less likely to comply with the UK advertising codes, including:
- Where businesses are responsible for a significant amount of environmental harm (for example, high amounts of harmful emissions), ads which reference specific environmental benefits or initiatives are more likely to mislead if they do not include balancing information on the business’s significant ongoing contribution to environmental harm.
- Ads which present a business’s negative environmental impact as being in the past are likely to mislead if the company is still having a significant negative impact.
- Environmental claims which relate narrowly to specific products or services should make clear which aspects they refer to, in order to ensure that they are not understood as being representative of the entire business.
Key features of the updated guidance are reviewed in further detail in our article, here.
