ASA Adjudication on BSH Home Appliances Ltd

Ad

A TV ad, for Bosch dishwashers, showed a woman washing up in the sink. The voiceover stated "Did you know that washing up by hand uses up to three times more water than if you used a fully loaded Bosch dishwasher. You could be saving up to 75% of your water. That's more than a shower every day ..."

Issue

A viewer challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied washing up by hand in a bowl of water used more water and energy than the dishwasher.  She believed that could only be true if the person washing up left the tap running.

BCAP TV Code

Response

Euro RSCG replied on behalf of BSH Home Appliances Ltd (BSH/ Bosch). They said that the comparison was deliberately shown to be between a fully-loaded dishwater and hand washing dishes under a running tap. They said their evidence for the claim came from a piece of research conducted by academics at the University of Bonn and sent a section of this research as substantiation. Euro RSCG said there was no intention on the part of the advertiser to imply energy saving but only water conservation in the ad.

Bosch also replied on their own behalf and said that they believed a full, energy efficient dishwasher cleaned best and had the lowest environmental impact of any method. They said the Bonn study on which they had based their claims had been repeated in laboratories in France, Italy, Spain and the UK to make sure that the results were a correct picture of consumer behaviour for a specific country. They said they believed the achieved cleaning performance was the most important measure for the whole washing up process and that dishwashers out-performed hand washing in this respect. They further said that the Bonn study showed that in the UK the average water consumption when handwashing 12 place settings (140 items) was 63 litres of water, and an AAA rated Bosch dishwasher used 12 litres of water on the Eco 50 cycle and as little as 9 litres of water on automatic cycles where sensors can decide to reduce the water consumption if the load is only slightly soiled. They said they believed the Bonn study was conclusive and showed that hand washing uses far more water than a Bosch dishwasher for the same result.

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) said they had requested detailed evidence from the advertiser before clearing the ad. They said they had requested the on-screen text "AAA rated machine used during the test", and "assumes 3 minute shower" as qualifiers. The BACC believed the ad clearly showed someone washing up with the tap running, rather than using a filled sink, and that indicated the comparison was being made with dishes done by hand under running water. They said the ad did not make any mention of energy saving with respect to using an electric dishwasher, and the claims made in the ad were entirely concerned with water conservation.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted EuroRSCG's evidence showed some electric dishwashers (those rated AAA) were more efficient in terms of water use than at least 111 of the 113 volunteer hand dishwashers participating in the main Bonn University study. We also noted, however, that the comparison depended both on the efficiency of the machines in question and the hand washing techniques applied. We acknowledged that the Bonn report showed that average manual dishwashing in the sample consumed significantly more water than an AAA electric dishwasher (a high resource conserving machine as rated under the European energy labelling scheme) but also that there was enormous variation in hand dishwashing techniques and that some techniques were water intensive and some conserved water.

We acknowledged that the results of the Bonn University study showed that AAA dishwashers used less water than at least 111 of the 113 hand dishwashers in the sample under the test conditions.  However, we also noted the research had not ensured participants in the study constituted a representative sample of European households but had been selected on a volunteer basis, albeit with a concerted attempt to recruit a range of nationalities.

We noted that the repeat of the test in the UK, on which Bosch had based the claims in the ad, used a sample of just 20 people.  We did not consider that 20 people, or indeed the 113 people who participated in the main study in Bonn, constituted a sufficiently large sample upon which to base a claim that implied AAA-rated dishwashers were unequivocally more water efficient than all hand dishwashing techniques in the UK, and that "washing up by hand uses up to three times more water than a fully loaded Bosch dishwasher".

We also noted the comments of the author of the Bonn report, who said the study contained a relatively low number of participants, which meant it was not possible to draw conclusions regarding hand washing techniques based on nationality. He also said in his conclusion, that the insights from his study were preliminary and needed to be verified under different conditions, for example using heavily soiled dishes and real household conditions.

We noted BSH had over thirty models of dishwasher on the market in the UK and the majority of these were rated AAA. We acknowledged that, in general, the report found that an AAA electric dishwasher was more efficient in terms of water conservation than hand washing techniques which used a running tap but considered that it had not been proven that AAA dishwashers were always more efficient than hand washing techniques without continuous tap running and which used a variety of techniques such as pre-soaking dishes, removing food scraps by hand first and re-using water.

The ASA considered that the visual in the ad of washing up taking place under a running tap when coupled with the voice-over stating "Did you know that washing up by hand uses up to three times more water than if you used a fully loaded Bosch dishwasher?" was not sufficient to make clear that some hand dishwashing techniques, particularly those using running water some or all of the time, were less water efficient than a dishwasher but some potentially more so.

Although we noted the ad claimed washing up by hand used "up to" three times more water than a fully loaded dishwasher, we considered the whole ad implied that washing up by hand would always use more water than a fully loaded Bosch dishwasher. We concluded that BSH had not justified that implication and the ad could mislead.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) Television Advertising Standards Code rules 5.4.6 (Comparative advertising) and 5.2.2 (Implications). We also investigated the ad under CAP (Broadcast) Television Advertising Standards Code rule 5.2.1 (Evidence) but did not find it in breach.

Action

The ad should not be broadcast again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)