On 19 October 2022, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority issued its latest ruling on environmental claims. There were complaints that two advertisements by HSBC were misleading because they omitted significant information about HSBC’s contribution to carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions.
The ads included no express comments about HSBC’s overall green credentials. Both ads highlighted specific environmental initiatives by HSBC, and there is nothing in the ruling to suggest the claims actually made in the ads were inaccurate. However, the ASA nonetheless found that consumers would take them to imply "that HSBC was making, and intended to make, a positive overall environmental contribution as a company". In the ASA’s view, HSBC’s involvement in the financing of businesses which made “significant contributions to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions” was material information, and omitting that information rendered the implicit claim misleading.
The ruling follows a trend of increasingly tough ASA decisions on environmental claims. In February 2022, the ASA found that ads by Innocent Ltd featuring merely aspirational claims (“big dreams for a healthier planet”) and calls to action (“reduce, reuse, recycle”), accompanied by images of people drinking Innocent products in lush green landscapes, implied that purchasing Innocent products had environmental benefits.
In the Innocent ruling, the ASA inferred, from vague, nebulous messaging, claims about the advertiser’s environmental credentials which went well beyond anything actually said in the ad. However, the HSBC ruling takes this reasoning further: it suggests that even when advertisers make specific, clear and factually accurate claims, the company’s wider environmental impact must also be disclosed. It appears that businesses now have to own up to all their environmentally damaging activities to make any environmental advertising claim at all.
