Travel companies have been advised they can contact the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) if they need help finding the “middle ground” between ‘greenwashing’ and ‘greenhushing’.
ASA operations manager Justine Grimley (pictured) told delegates at Abta’s Travel Regulations conference and Travel Weekly’s Sustainability Summit that the regulator’s in-house copy advice team aims to achieve 24-hour turnarounds for organisations seeking advice on whether their claims breach any rules, with quicker timescales available for a fee.
“If you’re stuck with something, do come and see us and we’ll do our best to try to help you work it out. We’re not in the business of preventing companies from making claims they want to make. We just want to help them get it right,” she told the Abta event, adding that the vast majority of cases considered by the ASA were the result of companies making inflated claims.
“Companies end up mistakenly exaggerating the extent of their efforts or the benefits that come about from them,” she added.
Laying out “fundamentals” that people should bear in mind, she recommended companies to be as specific as possible in their claims, avoid making absolute claims and ensure they hold any relevant evidence .
She added: “We hear some companies feel trapped between greenwashing on the one hand and greenhushing on the other. We want to help people navigate that middle ground.”
Greenhushing describes the scenario where an organisation decides against publicising its actions on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
Grimley told the Sustainability Summit that terms which consumers could not reasonably be expected to understand or pass judgment on should also be avoided, citing phrases such as “carbon neutral” or “net zero. She also said terms such as “environmentally friendly”, “sustainable” and “good for the planet” were “notoriously difficult to substantiate”.
“Remember the basis of an environmental claim always has to be made clear, but also do yourselves a favour and avoid using absolute claims as they trigger a whole load more analysis,” she said.
When asked if overseas travel that involved flying could ever be described as “sustainable” or “environmentally friendly” in adverts, she said: “We are not going as far as that [saying air travel is not sustainable]. It’s about taking a step back and thinking about the message of the ad as whole.”
Catalina Fuentes Benítez, lead lawyer for ESG at easyJet, told the Abta conference it was important that information was “consistently represented and comparable”.
She also said “a lot of noise” exists in the ESG sphere, adding: “People make so many claims that a lot of consumers don’t even consider them.”
Nick Barker, principal associate at law firm Weightmans, recommended travel firms to “understand how claims are going to be received by your customers”.
He also forecast that some companies would take increasingly bold decisions on ESG matters.
“I think we will start to see organisations taking a principled stand on this, perhaps even if it hits their profitability,” he said, adding: “There are potential benefits for organisations who do take more principled stances.”