ASA Adjudication on Maplin Electronics Ltd

Ad

A national press ad for a solar powered mobile phone charger from Maplin Electronics, "The Freeloader", stated "A little change makes a big difference... If we all used solar mobile phone chargers, we'd reduce CO2 emissions in the UK and Ireland by 3.65 million tons a year."

Issue

The complainant challenged the claim "... we'd reduce CO2 emissions in the UK and Ireland by 3.65 million tons a year". He found the ad misleading because he did not believe the calculation took into account emissions generated in the manufacture and disposal of this product.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Maplin Electronics Ltd (Maplin) said they had made the calculation by taking the average yearly discharge of CO2 by a mobile phone charger and multiplying it by the number of mobile phone chargers used and owned by the UK population.

They said they had obtained the mobile phone charger emission figure from an article in a national newspaper which quoted from a report by The Carbon Trust. Maplin said their claim related to solar charger usage only and that they had not looked at C02 production in the manufacture of their solar charger or any other mobile phone chargers as they believed this would fall outside their area of expertise.

Maplin maintained that the figure quoted in the ad related purely to electricity usage from the mains and was intended to illustrate how making a small individual change could contribute to a larger one, as part of their "National Solar Week".

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted the figure which Maplin used in their calculations for the amount of CO2 generated per year by a mobile phone charger that plugs into the mains was not a figure used in the Carbon Trust's report. Although we acknowledged that Maplin had used the figure in good faith, we considered that a newspaper article without appropriate and verifiable sources did not represent sufficient evidence for figures relating to C02 emissions for electronic devices.

We accepted that a solar powered charger was likely to generate lower C02 emissions than one that drew on the national grid through use. However, we noted The Freeloader could also be plugged into the mains and that the claim "If we all used solar mobile phone chargers we'd reduce CO2 emissions in the U.K and Ireland by 3.65 million tons a year" was based on the assumption that owners of "dual method" chargers such as The Freeloader would always charge them using sunlight. Because of this, and because Maplin had not provided adequate substantiation for the figures used in the ad, we concluded that they had not justified the claim.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) 7.1 (Truthfulness) 49.1, 49.2, 49.3 (Environmental claims).

Action

We told Maplin to delete the claim. We advised them to consult the CAP Copy Advice team before making similar claims in future.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)