The Enterprise Department Ltd t/a Coopers of Stortford 11 Bridge Street Bishop's Stortford Hertfordshire CM23 2JX Number of complaints: 1

Date: 20 August 2008 Media: Catalogue Sector: Household

Ad
An ad in a catalogue for a rechargeable lawn mower stated "Mow your lawn the environmentally friendly way with our Cordless Rechargeable Cylinder Lawn Mower! Requiring no messy, polluting petrol or oil this revolutionary cordless lawn mower allows you to mow your own lawn without smelly fumes or dangerous trailing wires ... In Coopers of Stortford Green, it runs off a 12v rechargeable battery it takes all the effort out of mowing the lawn and has a roller to give a beautiful, striped finish that is often difficult to achieve".

Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading because:

1. he did not believe the claim that the lawn mower was "environmentally friendly" could be substantiated, and

2. he believed that modern petrol mowers no longer produced unpleasant fumes.

The CAP Code:

3.1;7.1;49.2

Response
1. Coopers of Stortford (Coopers) said a web-based dictionary defined "Environmentally friendly" as a synonym "used to refer to goods and services considered to inflict minimal harm on the environment. Because there is no international standard for this concept, the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) considers such a label too vague to be meaningful". Coopers said because it was "too vague to be meaningful" it was hard to justify the phrase.

Coopers said, according to Consumer Reports, a consumer organisation in the USA, battery-operated electric lawn mower "created no exhaust emissions". They said the USA Environment Protection Agency (EPA) website stated that "Electric equipment is cleaner than equipment powered by gasoline engines. Electrically-powered lawn and garden tools produce essentially no pollution from exhaust emissions or through fuel evaporation". Coopers said the EPA also stated that "a traditional petrol powered lawn mower produces as much air pollution as 43 new cars being driven 12,000 miles".

Coopers explained that because their rechargeable lawn mower did not run on liquid fuel, there was no possibility of that fuel being spilled. They said the rechargeable lawn mower also made very little noise. They said, although they could not locate any formal studies of comparative noise pollution from electric and petrol driven lawn mowers, in their own tests they found the electric lawn mower to be quieter than any petrol lawn mower they had compared it to.

2. Coopers said the electric lawn mower did not produce any fumes, whereas a petrol driven lawn mower produced fumes containing pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide. They argued that it was subjective whether someone found fumes unpleasant or not, but they believed most people would find it unpleasant to breath in carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide fumes.

Assessment
1. Upheld
The ASA noted the Consumer Report and EPA report summaries that we had been directed to by Coopers, but noted that we had not seen the full studies for those reports. We also noted that those reports stated that electric lawnmowers, unlike petrol lawnmowers, produced no direct exhaust emissions while in use. We understood, however, that consumers were required to recharge the lawn mower using electricity, and we considered that the production of that electricity would result in the emission of pollutants.

We further considered that the claim "environmentally friendly" implied that there would be no environmental damage when taking into account the full life cycle and use of the product, including both manufacturing and charging it. We reminded Coopers that the Code stated that that claim should not be used without qualification unless marketers could provide convincing evidence that their product would cause no environmental damage when taking into account the life cycle of the product. Because Coopers had not provided evidence that that was the case, we concluded that on this point the ad was misleading.

On this point the ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 49.2 (Environmental claims).

2. Not upheld
We noted Coopers' argument that the electric lawn mower produced no exhaust emissions, whereas a petrol lawn mower would produce noxious fumes. We understood that a petrol lawn mower emitted various fumes including carbon monoxide, methane, hydrocarbons and nitrous oxide. We also understood that fitting a petrol lawn mower with a catalytic converter, or using a petrol lawn mower with a lower emission engine could reduce those emissions. We noted that the complainant believed that modern petrol lawn mowers no longer produced unpleasant fumes. However, we considered that some consumers would still have an older model of petrol lawn mower, and that not all modern lawn mowers were designed with lower emission engines. We therefore concluded that on this point the ad was not misleading.

On this point we investigated the ad under CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness) but did not find it in breach.

Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We advised Coopers to contact the CAP Copy Advice team for guidance when preparing future similar ads.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)