Innocent Guilty in Victory for Putney Strawberry Man
Regulator rules that drinks company's ad was misleading
Matt Palmer being arrested at Innocent Drinks HQ
A campaign by environmentalists against misleading advertising by the Innocent Drinks company has had success with the advertising regulator finding in its favour.
Matt Palmer from Putney dressed as a strawberry during a sit in last June with nine other members of the Plastics Rebellion group at Fruit Towers, the HQ of Innocent Drinks which is majority-owned by Coca-Cola.
The protestors, who also included a pear and a pineapple, were arrested and charged with aggravated trespass. In the event no further action was taken against them.
They were claiming that Innocent Drinks’ “Little Drinks Big Dreams” campaign was ‘greenwashing’ and that the company was exploiting the issue of climate change to sell more of its product even though its activities are environmentally harmful.
Coca-Cola, majority owner of Innocent, is the world’s top plastic polluter, according to Break Free from Plastic having been ranked as such for four years in a row.
At the beginning of June 2021, Plastics Rebellion hand delivered a letter to Douglas Lamont, CEO of Innocent Drinks and Simon Reid, company Sustainability Lead detailing three demands: to pull the advert immediately, to publicly apologise for intentionally misleading greenwashing and to schedule a meeting with Plastics Rebellion experts.
The company had claimed in the advert that buying its drinks contributed to “fixing up the planet” and was evasive when Plastics Rebellion sought to discuss the matter with them.
Now the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have ruled that the advert did breach the advertising code because the campaign implied that buying Innocent products would have a positive environmental impact which is misleading.
The ad was made for the company Mother Advertising Ltd in May 2021.
In its ruling the ASA said, “We considered that the ads would be understood to mean that Innocent was environmentally friendly and that purchasing their products had environmental benefits, we needed to see evidence that was the case. 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 lifecycles. 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.”
Plastics Rebellion sit-in at the company's Ladbroke Grove office
Innocent said, “Our purpose is to make healthy little drinks, and they do have to go in something. We’re genuinely confident that plastic is the most carbon efficient way to get it to people, and that encouraging recycling and the use of deposit return schemes will improve that even more.”
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. The truth is that the lifecycle of plastic is more carbon intense than aviation; incineration and chemical recycling are toxic; microplastics in the sea and air are a threat to human and animal health; recycling only happens 9% of the time, much plastic waste is still landfilled which is unsustainable - and anyone involved with profiting from plastic knows this.”
Like Reading Articles Like This? Help Us Produce More This site remains committed to providing local community news and public interest journalism. Articles such as the one above are integral to what we do. We aim to feature as much as possible on local societies, charities based in the area, fundraising efforts by residents, community-based initiatives and even helping people find missing pets. We've always done that and won't be changing, in fact we'd like to do more. However, the readership that these stories generates is often below that needed to cover the cost of producing them. Our financial resources are limited and the local media environment is intensely competitive so there is a constraint on what we can do. We are therefore asking our readers to consider offering financial support to these efforts. Any money given will help support community and public interest news and the expansion of our coverage in this area. A suggested monthly payment is £8 but we would be grateful for any amount for instance if you think this site offers the equivalent value of a subscription to a daily printed newspaper you may wish to consider £20 per month. If neither of these amounts is suitable for you then contact info@neighbournet.com and we can set up an alternative. All payments are made through a secure web site. One-off donations are also appreciated. Choose The Amount You Wish To Contribute. If you do support us in this way we'd be interested to hear what kind of articles you would like to see more of on the site – send your suggestions to the editor. For businesses we offer the chance to be a corporate sponsor of community content on the site. For £30 plus VAT per month you will be the designated sponsor of at least one article a month with your logo appearing if supplied. If there is a specific community group or initiative you'd like to support we can make sure your sponsorship is featured on related content for a one off payment of £50 plus VAT. All payments are made through a secure web site. |
March 4, 2022