Shell Oil's Flower Claims Wilt Upon Examination

The British government's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that an advertisement by Royal Dutch Shell promoting its waste recycling breaks rules with regards to "truthfulness" and "environmental claims." The print ad claimed that Shell has "creative ways to recycle. We use our waste CO2 [carbon dioxide] to grow flowers, and our waste sulphur to make super-strong concrete." The environmental group Friends of the Earth challenged the ad's claims, lodging a complaint with the British government. The ASA agreed that, "in the absence of qualification, most readers were likely to interpret the claim 'We use our waste CO2 to grow flowers' ... to mean that Shell used all, or at least the majority, of their waste CO2 to grow flowers, whereas the actual amount was a very small proportion." Shell defended its ad as "a creative and striking way of drawing attention to the problem of waste disposal." The ad ran "last spring in newspapers in Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany," reports Associated Press. "The Dutch advertising watchdog also called the ad misleading, but complaints were dismissed by regulators in Belgium and Germany."