Green marketers smarten up

In today’s world of thoughtless company greenwash, words like “eco”, “green’” and “environmentally friendly” are being thrown around with about as much discretion as four-letter words at a football match. However, unlike football fans, most of whom know to confine their behaviour to Saturday afternoons, greenwashing marketers and PR consultants seem to know no boundaries. Wherever consumers turn, large corporations are bombarding them with annoying and often meaningless eco-messages.

Travelling on a Virgin train just recently, I bought a bacon roll. On it, bold green letters staked the claim of “environmentally friendly packaging”. Why? On closer inspection, the product stated that the paper base was “biodegradable” as was the sticky label. But it also admitted that the plastic wrapper was, non-biodegradable and “not yet recyclable”.

As it turned out, the packaging was as green as a plastic bag.

Virgin is not green advertising’s only sinner. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has disciplined a number of companies in response to complaints by NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth. In November 2007, the ASA famously censured an ad by oil giant Shell that claimed: “We use our waste CO₂ to grow flowers.” NGOs complained the amount of CO₂ used in the flower project was a tiny proportion of that produced by Shell’s global activities – and the ASA agreed.

Public complaints of this type to the ASA rose sharply last year, according to an agency report in July. In 2006, the ASA received 117 complaints about environmental claims in 83 advertisements. In 2007, there were 561 complaints about 410 ads. That’s just under a 500% increase.

As complaints have risen, the ASA has noticed a number of recurring issues. The most common claims being challenged are carbon-reduction claims, cradle-to-grave claims and claims about green energy sources.

Concerned that PR was also suffering from greenwash syndrome, in March this year the PR industry body Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) urged the industry to follow DEFRA’s Green claims code and ISO14021 standard in their campaigns. With no signatories or concrete pledges to adhere to the CIPR’s guidelines, however, it’s not yet clear who, if anyone, has taken heed.

Moreover, misleading green claims on products – such as those on my bacon roll – remain poorly policed in the UK. The ASA may have been cracking down on unsubstantiated green claims, but its power is confined to the realm of paid advertising. Meanwhile, the recent CIPR guidelines observe that the Fair Trading Act of 1973 does “not seem satisfactory for dealing with many types of spurious environmental claims”.

Crackdown

Despite enforcement issues, the CIPR guidelines – together with CSR Europe’s sustainable marketing guide, backed by giants such as Sony, Danone and Unilever – are dealing a big blow to greenwashers.

“Claims should always avoid the vague use of terms such as ‘green’, ‘non-polluting’... they should avoid linking vague descriptions, such as ‘friendly’ or ‘kind’, with words like ‘earth’, ‘nature’, ‘environment’, ‘eco’ and ‘ozone,’” the CIPR advice says. CSR Europe’s guidelines concur.

Some companies defend their use of generic “eco-friendly” symbols or simple language because the green element of the product is too complicated to explain on a label. They say they explain the eco-claim’s significance on their website, or write it somewhere on the product in small print. Examples include electronics giant Philips, which uses a “green tick” logo on selected products.

CSR Europe berates these firms, stating that green claims should be “explicit about the meaning of any symbol … unless the symbol is backed by law, regulation or an independent certification scheme”.

Not only can you not make vague green claims anymore, according to the CSR Europe report, marketers are warned not to use specific words, such as “compostable”, “recyclable”, and “reduced energy consumption”, without first consulting the ISO 14021 guidelines on the use of terms.

Bouncing back

But as ethically minded as the new guidelines are, do they spell marketing suicide? How can advertisers be expected to conjure up environmental advertising slogans that avoid mentioning everyday buzzwords such as “green” and “eco-friendly”?

In the wake of the ASA crackdown, it seems that green marketers are already starting to bounce back with shrewd, ASA-compliant alternatives.

Flagged up by the July ASA report are two companies that managed to avoid censure despite complaints. Easyjet got around the ASA using the touchy-feely slogan, “Care about the environment? We do too!”; Eurostar got away with calling its offset train journeys “carbon neutral”. Not so lucky was British Gas, which was censured by the ASA for calling its offset scheme “carbon zero”.

Perhaps such formulations will regularly be able to slip through the ASA’s net – it’s hard to know for sure. “Marketers will always try to push the boundaries,” an ASA spokesperson says, adding that adverts will continue to be judged on a case-by-case basis. The spokesperson reports that environmental ad complaints in 2008 seem to be as frequent as in 2007.

As long as consumers show concern about climate change and the environment, marketers will be tempted to exaggerate a product’s eco-credentials. And marketers, it should be noted, are an adaptable species – so UK greenwash is sure to take on new disguises as the industry attempts to dodge the wrath of the ASA.


Facts:

The Advertising Standards Agency

- Covers paid-for advertising, not advertising on products (30 million ads appear in the national press every year)

- Responds to complaints but also claims to root out suspect advertising

- Runs a self-regulatory system, the rules of which are written and adhered to by the main advertising trade bodies

- Has the power to censor ads if they are judged to be misleading

- Can discipline repeat offenders by prohibiting media space, withdraw trading privileges and referring the company to government regulator Ofcom. No companies have yet been disciplined for repeatedly making misleading environmental claims.