Friends of the Earth says most car advertising still for 'gas guzzlers'
Wed 04 April 2007
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Friends of the Earth says that motor companies are still concentrating most of their advertising on the least efficient vehicles. In an analysis of car adverts placed in national newspapers over a two week period over half (55%) were for cars in the most polluting VED bands E to G, FoE said. Meanwhile, the ippr has called for climate change 'health warnings' on new car advertising.
Friends of the Earth said that the latest figures show no improvement since a similar survey in September 2005 when it was found that 57.6 % of car adverts were for vehicles with emissions over 165g/km (ie Band E or worse). FoE says that the European Commission has also recently acknowledged that car advertising is promoting the trend towards bigger and more powerful cars.
Friends of the Earth’s senior transport campaigner, Tony Bosworth, said: “The motor industry says that it is concerned about climate change, yet most of its adverts are still for gas-guzzling vehicles. It’s little wonder that the industry has failed to meet its voluntary target for selling greener cars. The industry should spend less time and money lobbying against targets to cut carbon emissions from its products, and more time and money into building and promoting greener cars”.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) has proposed that climate change 'health warnings' should be placed on advertising for new cars in showroom displays and in advertising. The 'think tank' proposes that all car advertising should carry bold and visible warnings about the contribution of driving to climate change. The ippr's report says that the messages would work in a similar way to health warnings on cigarette packs which help to encourage people to give up smoking.
The LowCVP recently launched the Cars NOT Carbon competition to encourage new creative approaches to greener motoring marketing. The competition is now open for entries (download details through the associated link).
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