Keeping up to date with regulation

Where businesses are responsible for significant emissions or other environmental harm, adverts referencing environmentally beneficial initiatives must also include information about the business' ongoing contribution to emissions or other environmental impacts.

Broad claims such as ‘sustainable’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ must be substantiated. Concrete actions are evidence, aspirations and intentions are unlikely to be accepted as such.

Claims which focus on specific initiatives as a way of achieving, for example, net zero, or carbon neutrality, must contextualise those claims with information about where this sits within a wider net zero plan, and how and when net zero emissions will be achieved.

‘Net zero’ and ‘carbon neutral claims’ cannot be made without being substantiated. Businesses must include accurate information about the extent to which they are actively reducing emissions, and how much of the claim is based on carbon offsetting, as opposed to overall reduction of carbon.

Claims based on future goals relating to reaching net zero or achieving carbon neutrality should be based on a verifiable strategy to deliver them. Where these claims are based on carbon offsetting, businesses must provide information about the offsetting scheme they are using.

Businesses must base environmental claims on the full life cycle of the advertised product and must make clear the limits of the life cycle. Definitive claims such as ‘environmentally friendly’ must only be made if the advertiser can demonstrate that the product or service has no overall detrimental effect on the environment across its entire lifecycle.

Businesses must consider consumers' likely interpretation of a claim and if necessary must provide additional information to ensure the meaning is clear. They should not assume a high level of understanding, and must consider the likely level of knowledge an audience has. Information required for substantiating a claim should be sufficiently close to the main aspects of the claim for consumers to be able to see it easily and take account of it before they make any decision.