Go Michael Phelps.

If Greenwashing were baseball, Royal Dutch Shell would be on the verge of striking out. Twice in less than a year the company has been called on the carpet for misleading eco-advertising, commonly called greenwashing. The first, and don’t ask me how they thought this wasn’t going to make sense to anyone, showed an oil refinery with flowers spewing from the stacks. Nice.

That ad was brought to the attention of the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) by the nonprofit organization Friends of the Earth. The nonprofit group challenged Shell’s claim that it used carbon dioxide emissions to grow flowers – just when you thought you’d heard it all, right. For its’ part, Shell said that an estimated 320,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide was scheduled to ship to greenhouse growers this year. Nice gesture but Friends of the Earth argued that amount represented only .325 per cent of the company’s carbon emissions.

I don’t know the chemistry, biology or whatever is involved in this kind of a deal but it sure sounds like a good thing – why they wouldn’t ship more to greenhouses is beyond me.

Anyways, the ASA ruled that in the absence of qualification the TV ads were misleading and Shell agreed to pull the ad in June of 2007. (Reuters UK)

In a ruling published today, the ASA took issue with Shell’s claims in this print ad that by building what would be the U.S.A.’s largest refinery, and tapping into the Canadian oil sands deposits is somehow environmentally responsible. Yeah, I can see how they would think that would make sense - more oil refineries. Now that is a real sustainable, innovative solution to the energy crisis.

The text of the ad reads -

“The challenge of the 21st century is to meet the growing need for energy in ways that are not only profitable but sustainable. As our 2007 results show, we’re investing heavily in new technology and assets to safeguard the interests of our shareholders and future generations. In Canada we’re harnessing our global network of technical and financial expertise to unlock the potential of the vast Canadian oil sands deposit. In the USA we’re helping to build what will be the nation’s largest refinery. And we’re exploring a new generation of biofuels made from non-food sources. Difficult yes, impossible no”

Difficult to believe, yes. Impossible, yes.

What we ought to be asking is who in the world is making these ads for them and how come nobody pushed the panic button when they saw an ad with flowers coming out of a refinery stack?

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