Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
Where: United Kingdom
When: 24 June 2026
Law stated as at: 22 July 2026
What happened
The ASA has published a report examining the prevalence and use of environmental claims in UK online advertising, based on an analysis of 7.7 million ads captured using its artificial intelligence (AI)-based Active Ad Monitoring system between September and November 2025. The analysis builds on the ASA’s ongoing Climate Change and the Environment work and strengthens its evidence base for understanding how such claims appear in practice across different sectors.
The report provides the first large-scale, cross-market view of how environmental claims are used in online advertising. Previously, the ASA’s environmental claims work focused primarily on specific sectors or issues of concern. This study examines patterns at scale, with the aim of understanding how frequently environmental claims appear, where they are concentrated and what types of claims are being made.
The headline finding of the report is that environmental claims in online ads are relatively rare (around 1% of ads), but those that do appear are often high-risk due to the use of absolute terms. Absolute terms such as “eco-friendly”, “sustainable” and “carbon neutral” imply that a product, service or business is environmentally beneficial overall and require a high level of substantiation under the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct and Promotional Marketing (CAP Code), carrying greater compliance risk as a result.
The ASA details sectoral findings focusing on areas where it has previously identified higher risk or consumer interest, including food, fashion retail, energy, travel and transport, green disposal and greener homes. In the food and agriculture sector, including food retail, the ASA found a higher prevalence of green claims at around 2% compared with 1% in online advertising overall, with almost all being absolute claims. Examples included phrases such as “eco-friendly coffee”; claims about “compostable”, “biodegradable” and “recyclable” packaging, or packaging having “less plastic” and being “plastic free”; and claims relating to products being organic, grass-fed, from “regenerative” farms, free-range or free from palm oil.
In addition to sector-level patterns, the analysis highlights the widespread use of a small number of recurring terms across the market. These terms – particularly “eco-friendly” and “sustainable” – appear across multiple sectors, but mostly in retail, particularly fashion and technology, and are often used in broad or non-specific ways, making them an important focus for regulatory attention.
Why this matters
Based on its findings, the ASA says that businesses should aim for more qualified, evidence-backed green claims to help consumers make informed choices and to reduce the risk of misleadingness.
The ASA also notes that the level of regulatory risk depends less on how often environmental claims appear and more on how they are framed and the context in which they are used. This underlines the importance of focusing on the type of claim, clarity and substantiation, particularly in areas where absolute claims are common and the risk of misleading consumers may be higher.
The ASA says that it will use the findings from this report to support and refine its approach to regulating environmental claims. It will continue to monitor such claims, using this study as a baseline against which future analysis can be compared and to track how their prevalence and nature change over time.
