Environmental claims: Innocent drinks?

An ad for the drinks company Innocent Ltd appeared on TV, a video-on-demand (VOD) ad, and as a paid ad on YouTube.

The TV ad featured an animation in which characters sang a song with the lyrics: “We’re messing up the planet. We’re messing up real good. And filling up our bodies with more beige food than we should...” It showed images of buildings and vehicles expelling pollutants, litter, dirty rivers and brown unappetising food. It continued: “We’re messing around with nature, we’re messing up the sea …”, accompanied by images of rubbish being thrown into water. A boat, with various characters including a talking otter reached a waterfall. The otter said “Woah, what are we doing?". The otter said, “Ok, let’s try this instead”, then sang, “Let’s get fixing up the planet. Fix it up real good …” The scene changed from a grimy, polluted environment to a greener, fresher one - see example in the image. The song continued, “Be kinder to our bodies with nature’s tasty food …”, while showing an image of fruit being squeezed into an Innocent drinks bottle. The song concluded, “Reduce. Re-use. Recycle. Because there is no planet B. If we’re looking after nature she’ll be looking after me”. Finally, a voice-over said, “Innocent. Little drinks with big dreams for a healthier planet.”

The YouTube and VOD ad were the same for all intents and purposes.

The ad can currently be viewed here.

It's catchy, and it is animated in a simple, attractive style, and all seems fairly...innocent. Nevertheless, the ad got under some people's skin, and the ASA thought they had a point.

Complaints

Twenty-six people complained, one of whom identified themselves as representing Plastics Rebellion. The complained that the ad seemed to exaggerate the total environmental benefit of the products being promoted by the ad, and was therefore misleading.

It is understood that the plastic bottles in which the drinks are sold by Innocent are recyclable, but may contain some new plastics (i.e. they are not made entirely from recycled plastic).

Response

In response to the complaints, Innocent said that the ad set out a purpose-led message, which invited consumers to join in on its journey of working towards a healthier planet. They said that it had environmental credentials, which gave it the standing to make that invitation. However, they claimed there was no suggestion in the ad that purchasing Innocent products themselves would lead to a positive environmental impact. 

They said that were the complaint to be upheld, the effect may be to stifle other brands and manufacturers from taking steps towards and communicating information about positive environmental actions they were taking. While the Innocent smoothie bottle did appear, it only appeared in scenes that demonstrated that Innocent was made using ingredients made from nature.

Innocent said that the words and imagery of the ad sought to encourage recycling, both generally (by showing bouncing commonly recyclable receptacles from umbrellas into a recycling bin) and specifically in relation to innocent products (by showing a person dressed in a bottle costume, with the innocent logo, standing next to a recycling bin).

Innocent considered that the ad did not make a specific environmental claim. Nevertheless, they provided substantiation to support their environmental ambitions, which they considered supported their ability to make claims about their ambitions. 

Innocent stated that they were a “B Corp”, which was a certification granted to some companies by the organisation B Lab to companies that demonstrated a high social and environmental performance. Innocent said that they had 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%. Innocent said that the end of the ad included the text “Find out more – innocentdrinks.co.uk”. They said that consumers who chose to look at the website after viewing the ad would find information about their various sustainability schemes.

With regards to their use of single-use plastics, Innocent said that the ad sought to show that recycling was better than throwing away. They said that the ad contrasted images of plastic in the water with a world in green where plastic was recycled. They said that their focus as a company was on using the minimum amount of plastic whilst also supporting recycling and their ambition was to recycle 70% of their bottles by 2023. They said that was to be achieved through education and awareness, lobbying for better recycling and deposit return schemes. They also said that they were working on developing more sustainable packaging. 

Innocent considered that the Competition and Markets Authority's latest guidance allowed companies to tell people about their dreams and aspirations for environmental change. Innocent chose to do that in a light-hearted and engaging way in the ad. They considered that, because the ad did not make a product-specific claim, but rather a statement about their wider environmental goals, and because they were able to support their environmental ambitions with evidence, the ad did not mislead as to the total environmental benefit of their products.

Clearcast, which had approved the ad for TV broadcast, said that the TV version of the ad did not make any statements that exaggerated the environmental benefits or actions of Innocent’s products or the company. They said that the first section - including the statements “We’re messing up the planet. We’re messing up real good. And filling up our bodies with more beige food than we should ...”; “We’re messing around with nature … We’re messing up the sea …” - were generally accepted claims and referred to the overall state of the planet, processed food and the effect humans were having on nature. They said that the next element of the ad, which included the “Let’s get fixing up the planet. Fix it up real good …”; “Be kinder to our bodies with nature’s tasty food …”, would be understood as a plea to viewers to try and turn around the damage that had been done, aligned with the efforts that Innocent were themselves making, and to eat healthier foods.

Clearcast said that they had requested evidence to support the claim “Reduce, re-use, recycle” which they viewed as a call to action. They said that Innocent had outlined their drive to sustainably source 100% of their ingredients, their plans to make every bottle that they made recyclable and to become carbon neutral by 2030. They believed the reference to dreams would be interpreted as aspirational and that the ad overall would be interpreted as an aspirational call to action to support a better planet in the future, rather than as making specific environmental claims about the products or the company.

ASA's decision

Upheld

The ASA considered that the ads drew a strong association between Innocent Drinks and a positive impact on the environment. They acknowledged that the ad contained aspirational messaging, including imagery of people recycling, choosing natural foods and choosing to “reduce, reuse recycle”, the final line “Little drinks with big dreams for a healthier planet” and a link to the Innocent website for more information. However, the ASA concluded that while some consumers would interpret the ad simply to mean that Innocent had made an aspirational commitment to doing their part to do better for the environment, or that the ad was a call to action for everyone more generally to do better for the plane, 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. 

The ad only showed Innocent products being consumed and Innocent branding being used in the scenes that showed the planet being ‘fixed up’, while showing people and animals relaxing in a green environment, planting trees and throwing products into a recycling bin.

The ASA considered that this implied there was a direct association between choosing Innocent drinks and taking positive action to help the environment. This was reinforced by the lyrics “Let’s get fixing up the planet. Fix it up real good …” and “Reduce. Re-use. Recycle. Because there is no planet B. If we’re looking after nature she’ll be looking after me”, which the ASA considered would be interpreted as a claim that purchasing Innocent products was making an active choice to reduce, re-use and recycle, and was more broadly, a claim that Innocent was environmentally friendly and that purchasing their products had environmental benefits which would help ‘fix up the planet’.

The ASA considered that the ads would be understood to mean that Innocent was environmentally friendly, and that purchasing their products had environmental benefits, therefore the ASA asked to see evidence that was the case. 

On reviewing the evidence that was presented to them, the ASA agreed that Innocent were undertaking various actions aimed at reducing the environmental impact of their products. However, the ASA concluded that the evidence did not support the implied claim that buying Innocent products had a net positive environmental impact over their full lifecycles. 

The ASA emphasised that Innocent's 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 ASA upheld the complaints. They breached the rules in the BCAP Code (TV ad) and CAP Code (YouTube and VOD ad), governing misleading advertising, the need for substantiation, and the section on environmental claims.

The ads must not appear again in their current form. The ASA told Innocent to ensure that future ads that make environmental claims, make the basis of those claims clear. The ASA told Innocent to ensure that their ads did not mislead as to the total environmental benefit of their products and that environmental claims were based on the full lifecycle of the products, unless stated otherwise.

Lessons

The ASA is gunning for brands that make environmental claims that they consider are not fully justified or are not supported by robust evidence.

The purpose of the ASA (and CMA’s) crackdown on greenwashing is ultimately to press companies to do more to make their products and their business practices more environmentally friendly. They will allow companies to make specific, evidence-based claims about their environmental credentials. However, the regulators will discourage advertisers from making very broad environmental claims, unless they go above and beyond to justify them, and that will be a very hard sell when it comes to products that involve a significant amount of plastic.

This ruling serves as a warning to companies that the ASA will consider complaints not just from consumers but from campaign groups.

While it can be straightforward for a company to justify specific environmental claims, it is much riskier to create the impression that buying products that involve non-recycled plastic (even if that plastic is recyclable) would in some way be a positive choice for the environment. 

It’s great to encourage consumers to “reduce, reuse and recycle”, but a significant proportion of recyclable plastic packaging inevitably ends up in landfill, so companies that use plastic extensively will have an uphill struggle to convince the ASA that their products represent a net-positive choice for the environment.

You can find the full ruling here.