Use of environmental claims in automobile industry

Bente Øverli

Head of section consumer ombudsman’s office in Norway

bo@forbrukerombudet.no

The problems with green claims in automobile industry

• The car industry have worked hard to develop more ”environmental friendly” cars

• They really want to tell this to the consumers

• Have seen an eagerness to use green claims for many years

What is an environmental claim?

Use of statements, information, symbols and/or labelling schemes in marketing which give the impression that the company takes particular regard to the environment or that the product has such particular properties.

Does this have to be wrong?

• No

• It is positive that industry work hard to develop better products

• To a certain extent, they should also be allowed to use this in their marketing

• But;

But….

• If they do this in a misleading way, they undermine what could be a good development, namely a healthy competition

• And they do of course also mislead the consumers…

Claims used in 2007 in marketing

• Toyota Prius: “The world’s most environmentally friendly car”

• Opel: “Environmentally friendly engines”

• Peugeot: “...the powerful and environmentally friendly Hdi turbodiesel engine...”

• Suzuki: “The sales and environmental winner”

• Smart: “Try out the world’s most environmentally friendly and fun city car...”

• Toyota: “The world’s cleanest diesel engines”

• Saab: “...environmentally friendly turbodiesel...”

“The world’s most environmentally friendly car”

“...environmentally friendly turbodiesel...”

• In other words – everyone was best on environment and everyone was environmentally friendly

• This was, of course, not acceptable, and could undermine a good development and mislead the consumers

What is ”environmentally friendly”?

• From cradle to grave

• Production, choise of materials, energy consumption

• Emission of locally and globally polluting substances

• Noise

• Recycling

• Almost impossible to compare…

What is ”green”?

• Neither green nor clean

• A car cannot do anything good for the environment except less damage than others

What did we do?

• Start handling cases – or invite to a round table?

• We invited to a round table, where the car importers, environmental organisations and representatives from the Norwegian Directorate of Public Roads were present

What did we do?

• This led to an agreement with the car industry : they all wanted to avoid the use of expressions such as environmentally friendly / green, and instead focus on neutral product information.

Benefits:

• Less risk of misleading information

• Fair competition

Agreement with the car industry

• General expressions such as “environmentally friendly” or “green” can not used or be linked with the vehicle’s environmental properties.

• This applies regardless of whether the

expressions are used in isolation or with more detailed explanations in the marketing (Environmentally friendly/green because…..)

Guidelines

• Recommends the use of objective claims about a vehicle’s environmental properties such as ”low emissions of…”

• Guide the consumer to make safe choice depending on wishes and need

Guidelines

• use of good environmental properties, like: – ”low emissions of…”

– ”less use of…”

– ”less noise….”

…..can only be used if its possible to document that the vehicle is among the top third on the marked in respect of the properties being promoted

Guidelines

• If the importers use pure product information/neutral information in brochure material or similar, the top third requirement does not apply

• Typical: factual information about engine type, emissions, safety, technical data, fuel type, particel filter, noise level etc

Guidelines

• Information or marketing? Must be assessed specifically. What’s the immediate impression?

Results

• We have seen an improvement in the use of environmental claims

• Not as specific, more general, like ” we spend billions every year in order to development engines with less emissions”

• Great results! Nearly no breaches of agreement in 2009

Norwegian guidelines

• http://www.forbrukerombudet.no/index.gan?id=11040567&subid=0

• Our newest:

Guidelines on using claims such as ”climate neutral” etc in marketing