Truth-in Advertising Regulator Takes Action Against Water Company
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) isn’t having it:
An ad campaign by Anglian Water extolling how it cleans water by creating wildlife-friendly wetlands has been banned for not telling consumers about its history of releasing sewage into the environment.
Last month, Anglian Water pleaded guilty to allowing millions of litres of untreated sewage to overflow from a water recycling centre in Essex.
The company said it often “exceeded the expectations” of regulators such as the Environment Agency and Ofwat and did not believe “any significant information had been omitted from the campaign”. However, Environment Agency figures earlier this year showed there were a total of 301,091 sewage spills in 2022, an average of 824 a day.
Anglian Water told the ASA that it did not actively dump sewage into rivers and seas.
This is not a great look, frankly, for the EA or Ofwat either.
The ASA concluded that:
Ad (a) breached BCAP Code rules 3.1, 3.2 (Misleading advertising), 3.9 (Substantiation), 9.2 (Environmental claims) and ad (b) breach CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 11.1 (Environmental claims).