The ASA has recently upheld a ruling against electric scooter hire company TIER Operations Ltd for making misleading environmental claims.

The Ad

A poster for TIER seen on the London Underground in July 2021 featured an image of a scooter with text which said 'Be environmentally friendly. Take a TIER #changemobilityforgood'.

The Issue

The ASA challenged whether the claim 'be environmentally friendly... take a TIER' misleadingly implied that electric scooters caused no environmental damage.

Response

TIER responded to the ASA stating that the claim 'be environmentally friendly... take a TIER' was not an absolute claim and was implicitly relative. They were addressing people who had a selection of mainstream travel options, such as petrol cars or non-electric buses, with the conclusion being that 'taking a TIER' was an environmentally sound choice as a means of transport.

They argued that the phrase 'environmentally friendly' could also be seen as a term which described the attributes of a product or service, rather than the product or service in its entirety. In this case, TIER could be described as environmentally friendly because they used electric vans and cargo bikes in their servicing, renewable energy for charging, recycled materials in production and decommissioned scooters were recycled.

TIER went on to provide a report from the International Transport Forum, a paper entitled Life Cycle Assessment on the Mobility Service E-Scooter Sharing and a Life Cycle Assessment Mobility study to argue their case further.

Assessment

Surprisingly, none of this was enough to convince the ASA, who upheld this ruling.

The ASA considered the claim 'be environmentally friendly' to be an absolute claim and would be understood to mean that the TIER electric scooter caused no environmental damage over the full lifecycle of the scheme, rather than that it had lower carbon emissions than the comparator vehicles.

The ASA acknowledged TIER’s argument that the claim was an implicitly relative claim, however argued it did not present as a clear comparison with any other mode of transport nor was it expressed in a more limited comparative way, such as ‘environmentally friendlier’.

They considered the papers and study submitted by TIER in their response, however did go on to discuss the full lifecycle of the scooters in their ruling, which they considered did not demonstrate that the TIER E-Scooter scheme caused no environmental damage over its full lifecycle.

The ASA found the ad to breach CAP Code rules 3.1 and 3.7 (misleading advertising) and 11.1, 11.3 and 11.4 (environmental claims). 

Our thoughts

This ruling seems rather harsh on TIER – the claim ‘be environmentally friendly….take TIER’ doesn’t immediately strike me as an absolute claim and to me, instead offers a more environmentally friendly option to commuters than other modes of transport; for example the London Underground where this ad was seen.

The ASA is due to publish new guidance on environmental claims in 2022/2023 following research into the area, however noted late last year that it's important for the ASA to get the balance right between preventing misleading environmental claims and allowing advertising to drive positive consumer behaviour. This ruling serves as a stark warning for all those planning on making any kind of environmental claim as it seems the ASA is focusing more on the former, than the latter.