Yahoo Finance Innocent TV ads banned over 'misleading' environmental claims
Watch: Innocent TV adverts banned over 'misleading' environmental claims
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned TV adverts for drinks company Innocent after the watchdog ruled that they were "misleading" customers over the firm's environmental impact.
Environmentalists, including activist group Plastic Rebellion, had reported the TV ad for claiming that drinking Innocent drinks was good for the environment.
Innocent's ads show animated characters encouraging people to "get fixing up the planet" by buying the company's drinks. The firm said it had aimed to show "the need for collective action".
But, ASA said the adverts did not show that Innocent's single-use plastic products had a "net positive" environmental impact over their full life cycles.
The brand, which is majority-owned by Coca Cola (KO) has been making an effort to improve its climate credentials among consumers.
In the ruling, Innocent responded that it was a B Corp – a certification granted by the organisation B Lab to firms that demonstrated a high social and environmental performance.
The smoothie-maker added it was committed to being carbon neutral by 2030, and had opened a carbon-neutral factory that ran on renewable energy and a cleaning system that reduced water usage by 75%.
The bottles that the firm sells in Britain contain 50% recycled plastic and 50% virgin material, excluding the caps and labels.
It added it was not trying to show that smoothies are good for the environment, and was instead making a call to action to its customers not to harm the planet.
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ASA's ruling states that "many consumers would interpret the overall presentation of the ad to mean that purchasing Innocent products was a choice which would have a positive environmental impact".
Officials at the regulator said they wanted evidence that this claim was in fact correct, and they were not satisfied with the response.
"Although we acknowledged that Innocent were undertaking various actions which were aimed at reducing the environmental impact of their products, that did not demonstrate that their products had a net positive environmental impact over their full life cycles, the regulator said.
"We also noted that their drinks bottles included non-recycled plastic and that the extraction of raw materials and subsequent processing of those materials in order to produce the bottle would have a negative impact on the environment."
The ruling means Innocent is no longer allowed to use the ad in its current form, or make claims about the supposed environmental merits of its products without providing proof.
A spokesperson for Innocent said: "We’re disappointed to see the ruling from the ASA. Our advert was always intended to highlight important global environmental issues and the need for collective action to make a change.
"We transparently share more about the work that we do on sustainability on our website. As with any new guidelines, we’d like to work with the ASA and other brands to understand how to align to them to continue the conversation on these important topics."
"You can’t be a major contributor to a global health and environmental emergency and claim to fix up the planet," a spokesperson for Plastics Rebellion said.
They added that Innocent were being "disingenuous" about the dangers of plastic's threat to human health and the environment, as well as "trivialising the horrific scale" of the issue by repeating the mantra: 'reduce, re-use, recycle'.
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