Credit: Lavazza Coffee
Online advertisements for Lavazza Coffee’s coffee pods and Dualit’s coffee bags have been banned after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found them to imply that the industrially compostable packaging can be composted at home.
A paid-for search advertisement for Lavazza Eco Caps coffee pods previously described the product as “compostable capsules for your home” – yet the ASA questioned whether this statement was misleading, since the pods are only certified as industrially compostable.
In the same vein, a paid-for search ad for Dualit coffee bags described the product as “compostable”, which the ASA also challenged as misleading due to their industrial compostability.
Both Lavazza and Dualit said they didn’t intend to market the products as home-compostable. Their view was that consumers were not expected to assume from the word “compostable” that the product was suitable for domestic compost; rather, this description referred to the compostable properties of the product’s material.
Dualit specified that its bags were made of polylactic acid (PLA) derived from plants and ground coffee, and that they had been tested and proven to compost in order to make their compostability claim. Paid-for search ads offered limited space, the company explained, so its website provided further information on the product’s disposal.
Lavazza also pointed to its website, which specified that the Lavazza Eco Cap product was certified for industrial composting in line with the European Standard EN13432.
However, guidance from the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) specifies that, if an advertisement mentions a disposal process that is ‘likely to differ’ from the average consumer’s expectation of that process, it should provide clear guidance. In this case, the ASA argues that neither Lavazza nor Dualit adequately clarified where and how their products can be disposed of – a factor that would likely influence a consumer’s spending decision, it believes – and therefore violated the CAP Code.
It ruled that, when applied to a consumer product for use in the home, the phrase “compostable” suggested that the pods and bags could be placed in a home composter, and was therefore “likely to mislead”.
“A product certified to meet that standard [EN13432] was designed to break down within an industrial compost,” the ASA explained. “It would therefore not necessarily break down within a domestic compost, as the composts differed in composition – for example, in temperature.
“Also, a product may take longer to break down fully in a domestic compost, if at all, and toxic matter may remain.
“We further understood that compostable plastics should not be placed within plastic recycling collections as they could contaminate plastic recycling streams.
“Additionally, not all local Councils were able to place industrially compostable plastics, such as when collected with food or garden waste, within an industrial compost and some Councils recommended compostable plastics be placed in a waste bin.”
The ASA asserted that the products’ incompatibility with home composting, their intended disposal location, and guidance to help consumers locate their nearest disposal point “was material information that should have been made clear in the search ad, notwithstanding any space limitations.
“In any event, we considered the ad was not limited by time or space to such an extent that the information could not be provided. The ad had a character limit of 270, Lavazza had used 252. Dualit had used 132.
“There was, therefore, sufficient space within the ad format to correctly inform about the nature of the product and how it should be disposed.”
While the Lavazza advertisement did link to a page that specified the different varieties of Lavazza coffee capsules available, information about the capsules’ disposal was reportedly absent. Although an image of the product packaging did feature the text “COMPOSTABLE CAPSULES CERTIFIED EN13432:2002”, this was considered “too detached from the initial compostable capsules claim” and “unlikely” to inform consumers that the capsules are unsuitable for home composting.
Other pages on the company website were said to clarify that the pods were compostable in an industrial facility, including the ‘Recycling’ section of their Frequently Asked Questions page and a page dedicated to the Lavazza A Modo Mio range, specifically. Yet, the ASA emphasized that consumers weren’t guaranteed to visit those pages as part of their purchase journey and was therefore unclear.
Similarly, Dualit’s advertisement linked to a webpage that listed the range of coffee bags available, but provided no further clarity on the proper disposal of the product packaging.
Individual coffee bag product listing pages on Dualit’s website stated that the bags are “industrially compostable; pop the used Coffee Bag into your food waste bin and let your authorised council collection scheme do the rest”. Yet, these pages were not accessible via the paid-for advertisement.
The ASA added that consumers must scroll down the full length of the page to find this information, meaning they could feasibly purchase the coffee bags without reading it – and if they did, the term “industrially compostable” does not adequately clarify what action they need to take, if any.
Dualit should also have been clearer about placing the bag in food collection bins, the ASA suggested, since some local councils do not accept compostable plastics in this waste stream.
Altogether, the advertisements were considered to breach the following rules set by the CAP Code:
- 3.1 – Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
- 3.3 – Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
- 11.1 – The basis of environmental claims must be clear. Unqualified claims could mislead if they omit significant information.
- 11.2 – The meaning of all terms used in marketing communications must be clear to consumers.
The paid-for search advertisements in their current form may not be displayed again in its current form.
“We told [the companies] to ensure their search ads did not mislead over the correct route for disposal when making composting claims or omit material information about the disposal of compostable products,” the ASA concluded.
In a similar instance, OceanSaver has withdrawn online and television advertising for its laundry capsules after the ASA ruled that claims regarding the environmental benefits of their PVOH membrane, including biodegradability and reduction of plastic pollution, were misleading. OceanSaver responded that it ”could have provided more detailed explanations about the environmental impact of plastics and harmful chemicals—and what our products do to address them.”
Meanwhile, Hagens Berman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Procter & Gamble, alleging that on-pack environmental claims about its Charmin toilet paper ‘mask’ the corporation’s ‘widespread deforestation practices’. These include the use of ’eco-friendly’ buzzwords and on-pack symbols thought to mislead consumers about the product’s sustainability credentials.
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