ASA Adjudication on Borcombe SP Ltd

Ad

A direct mailing, for a print company, stated "As Britain's leading eco-friendly printer we know that GREEN IS GOOD It's good for the environment and good for business ... We've raised the bar for high quality print by running our presses on electricity generated from 100% renewable sources ... When it comes to print, you don't get greener than BORCOMBE SP".

Issue

An employee of Friends of the Earth, who also ran a website which listed environmentally certified printers, challenged whether the claim "Britain's leading eco-friendly printer" was misleading and could be substantiated.

CAP Code

Response

Borcombe SP (BSP) said the mailing was designed in good faith and mailed to a small number of commercial companies; fewer than 475 in total.  They said the mailing was sent mainly to companies to which they had provided quotations in the last 12 months; it was not sent to companies that BSP had targeted as being particularly environmentally conscious. BSP said they had focussed on their green credentials in the mailing because they took them seriously and had demonstrably gone further than all other UK printers that they, or their trade association, had been able to track.  They said they were certified to ISO 14001 (An international quality standard for environmental management systems), their working practices exceeded the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) Chain of custody requirements and they had been awarded both FSC and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) accreditation.  They said all their printing inks were vegetable, as opposed to oil, based and 100% of the energy they used came from renewable sources.  They said they had been certified with several other International Standards Organisation Certificates (ISO 9001, ISO 12647 and ISO 18001).

BSP said that, before they sent the mailing, they had confirmed with the British Printing Industry Federation (BPIF), of which they were members, that none of their other members had achieved equivalent accreditations and certifications to those achieved by BSP.  They said they also reviewed an article in the August 2007 edition of the trade publication Printmag and found from that that there were only two other companies that had achieved similar accreditations.  They said they had checked those two companies and found that neither offered as their 'house sheet' the recyclable and environmentally preferable "9lives55" paper that BSP did.  Furthermore, they said neither of those companies was active in the same markets as BSP or the market sectors the mail shot was sent to and no advantage could therefore be gained by BSP through the claim, because the mailing was distributed to 475 companies only.  In addition, they said one of those companies claimed to recycle up to 95% of their waste, whereas BSP recycled 100% of its manufacturing waste and the other company did not offer a 'green laminate product' for paper lamination, which BSP did.  They said on the basis of all their evidence it was legitimate for them to claim that they were "Britain's leading eco-friendly printer".

BSP believed they were the only printing company in the UK to have measured their carbon footprint in conjunction with the BPIF, using the British Standards Institute's (BSI) PAS 2050 method.  They said they would imminently be accredited as the first BPIF/BSI accredited Carbon Neutral printer.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted BSP had several environmental accreditations including ones from the FSC and the PEFC and they used vegetable-based inks and recycled paper.  We also noted they had taken steps to establish whether other printing companies had similar accreditations and had identified only two other companies, both of which they believed did not offer the same level of 'eco-friendly' services.  

We understood from the BPIF, however, that they did not keep a comprehensive record of the different environmental accreditations held by their members and therefore they had not provided confirmation that BSP was the 'leading' printer in that respect.  We noted the industry article BSP provided showed that several printing companies had achieved ISO 14001, FSC and PEFC standards, although only two of them had achieved those three standards as well as taking part in carbon offsetting schemes to attain a 'carbon neutral' status.  We noted BSP had not yet been classified as 'carbon neutral' but they were working with the BPIF to achieve that using the BSI's PAS method.

We noted the ad referred to the FSC and PEFC accreditations but that a large number of other printers held these accreditations.  We also noted that BSP had differentiated themselves from those other companies by including the "carbon neutral" status, even though they had yet to achieve that and that they had differentiated themselves from the other two companies that did have a carbon neutral status on the basis of one company only recycling up to 95% of their waste and the other company not offering a 'green laminate product' for paper lamination.  

We considered that consumers were likely to interpret the claim "Britains leading eco-friendly print" to mean that BSP had demonstrably gone further than other companies in their environmental activities.  We noted at least two other companies had a very similar environmental record and there were only small differences in their environmental activities.

Because there were several other companies that had the same environmental accreditations and BSP had not demonstrated that they were more "eco-friendly" than those companies to justify the "leading" claim, we concluded that it was likely to mislead.

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

Action

We told Borcombe not to repeat the claim "Britain's leading eco-friendly printer".  We advised them to seek guidance from the CAP Copy Advice team for their future advertising.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)