OceanSaver Laundry detergent has pulled advertising for its laundry capsules after U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found that its claims regarding its environmental biodegradeability and reduction of ocean plastic were misleading.
The company’s advertising claimed that its laundry pods, made with PVOH film, were “one of the good plastics that are dissolvable and fully biodegradable.” It also claimed to be “100% plastic free and contain zero microplastics.” And finally, the company said “Every product bought makes an impact, with over 2 million pieces of plastic […] saved from our ocean so far.”
“OCEAN SAVER, the ocean will thank you” one ad said.
Ecover (UK) Ltd and People Against Dirty Holdings Ltd, who understood OceanSaver’s “Eco Laundry Capsules” and “Eco Dishwasher Tablets” used a dissolvable film that contained polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH), challenged whether their claims about ocean plastic and biodegradeability could be substantiated.
OceanSaver’s evidence for its claims included a piece of legislation from the U.S. State of Maine, a peer-reviewed journal article, two webpages, ingredients for their products, and two manufacturer statements. After looking at the documents, the ASA said referred to PVOH but not specifically to OceanSaver’s product or even a product with the same composition. So they could not be used to substantiate the claims. “Additionally,” they said regarding the dissolvability of the PVOH, “one of the articles reviewed studies that showed different levels of degradation of between 38% and 86%, which meant that some PVOH was left.”
On the claim “so you don’t harm the sea”, OceanSaver said that their product was not required to be labeled “Harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects” pursuant to Commission Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008. ASA’s response was that the warning pertained only to the chemical content of the pods, rather than their PVOH membrane, so the lack of a warning statement on the advertised product was not in itself adequate substantiation for the implied claim that the product in its entirety would not harm sea or aquatic life.
OceanSaver’s claim to having reduced two million pieces of plastic going into the ocean was based on a statistic from the World Wide Fund for Nature which said 80% of plastic in the ocean originated on land. The company said it had sold more than two million units of their product, therefore that saved two million pieces of non-biodegradeable ocean plastic.
This argument also failed with the ASA. “We considered consumers would understand from the claim “over 2 million pieces of plastic and 11,000 litres of harmful chemicals saved from our Ocean so far” in ad (a) that by buying OceanSaver’s products consumers were in some way contributing to that effort…. We had not seen evidence that showed they had prevented the claimed plastic and chemicals from entering the sea, nor that by buying OceanSaver’s products consumers would contribute to that level of prevention. We therefore concluded the claim had not been substantiated.”
