ASA ruling on Wessex Water: "no water under the bridge"

On 10^th July 2024, the Advertising Standards Authority ("ASA") banned Wessex Water's ad which talked about its storm overflows on the basis that it omitted material information on its environmental credentials and was therefore likely to mislead. This ruling is relevant for advertisers and agencies making claims about an organisation's environmental performance. It provides insight into specific and general environmental claims, and when an ad must contain material information about an organisation's environmental impact.

Facts and Issue

Wessex Water aired a TV ad on 29th February 2024 asserting that it was "taking a different course" by investing £3 million a month to tackle storm overflows, “building more storm tanks to increase storage” and “separating rainwater from sewage”. Finally, it claimed that “a better way, for our waterways, is already under way”. The ad had been cleared by Clearcast prior to broadcast.

The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading since it omitted material information about Wessex Water’s history of releasing sewage into the environment.

Wessex Water's response

In its response, Wessex Water argued that the omission was immaterial since it only made specific claims about storm overflows rather than general claims about the environment. To support their specific claim, they adduced evidence of their capital expenditure and approved five-yearly plan. While Wessex Water recognised its low Environmental Performance Assessment ("EPA") ratings for 2021 and 2022, it anticipated returning to four-stars for 2023 its ratings.

ASA Assessment

The ASA held that the ad misled consumers by omitting material information, in breach of BCAP rules 3.1 and 3.2, and that it did not make basis of its environmental claims clear, in breach of BCAP rule 9.2.

The ASA found that while the initial focus was a specific initiative (i.e., storm overflows), the ad subsequently broadened in scope. The ASA focused on the overall impression on a viewer of the claims in the ad (“a different course”, “For you. For life” and “A better way for our waterways is already underway”), alongside the visuals of a dark background changing to green waterways and wetlands. This contributed to the overall impression that although the improvements were still in progress, some environmental benefit was already being achieved.

Subsequently, the ASA evaluated Wessex Water's environmental performance. Wessex Water had an EPA rating of two (out of four) for 2021 and 2022, in contrast to the period 2011-2020 where they had achieved either three or four stars. It found that Wessex Water’s efforts in storm overflows would likely result in improvements to their environmental impact. However, their storm overflow problems had also caused harm to the environment (e.g., by discharging storm sewage into natural water sources), reflected in their most recent EPA rating. This contradicts the overall impression of the ad since this environmental harm was significant and material information which should have been made clear in the ad.

Takeaways

This ruling aligns with the crackdown on "greenwashing" across the EU and UK and builds on the ASA's increasingly powerful enforcement against such ads in contexts like sewage disposal (Anglican Water) and carbon emissions (Luton Rising). In each of these rulings, while the advertisers had proved environmental benefits, the ASA found that their claims were still misleading since they did not disclose material environmental harms – this wrongfully projected an image of overwhelmingly positive impact by the advertisers on the environment.

This serves as a reminder for organisations to carefully design the script and visual presentation of their ads. Where ads tread into general environmental claims, they need to be comprehensive about the organisation's environmental performance relevant to that area. If the organisation has average or poor environmental credentials, the ruling suggests that ads on specific environmental initiatives must either focus on exclusively that initiative or proactively disclose any record of environmental harms.