Drinks company Innocent have had an advert banned by UK’s Advertising Standards Authority after environmentalists reported them for claiming that drinking their smoothies is good for the environment.
The TV, YouTube and video on demand ads showed animated characters singing the lyrics: “We’re messing up the planet. We’re messing up real good”, against a backdrop of buildings and vehicles expelling pollutants, litter and dirty rivers.
An otter then produces a guitar and continues: “OK, let’s try this instead,” then sings: “Let’s get fixing up the planet. Fix it up real good”, as the background changes to a greener, brighter colour scheme with images of trees being planted.
The song concludes: “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Because there is no planet B. If we’re looking after nature she’ll be looking after me”, accompanied by images of people relaxing in a lush green environment, with many of them alongside bottles of Innocent drinks.
At the end of the ad, a voice-over states: “Innocent. Little drinks with big dreams for a healthier planet”.
The brand, which is known for its “wackaging” and is majority owned by Coca-Cola, has been making an effort to improve its climate credentials among consumers.
Complainants, including the activist group Plastics Rebellion, argued that the ad implied that drinking smoothies from a disposable plastic bottle was good for the environment.
In response, Innocent said they were a B Corp, which was a certification granted by the organisation B Lab to companies that demonstrated a high social and environmental performance. Innocent said 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%.
They also said they were not trying to show that smoothies are good for the environment, and were instead making a call to action to their customers not to harm the planet.
The ASA, however, ruled in favour of the complainants. They found that Innocent’s advert drew a strong association between the drinks and a positive impact on the environment.
The 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 said they wanted evidence that this claim was in fact correct, and they were not satisfied with the response.
The ASA said: “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. 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”.
Innocent are now not allowed to use the advert in its current form, or make claims about the supposed environmental merits of their products without proof for them.
A spokesperson for Plastics Rebellion said: “You can’t be a major contributor to a global health and environmental emergency and claim to fix up the planet. Innocent are being disingenuous about the dangers of plastic’s threat to human health and environment, as well as trivialising the horrific scale of the problem by repeating the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’. They’re guilty of brushing the plastic crisis under the carpet and trivialising it”.
