Music industry leads fight against 'greenwash'

It seems everyone wants to be 'carbon neutral', 'wholly sustainable' and 'low emission' as businesses and organisations realise the importance of the environment in the market place. But now advertising watchdogs are clamping down on some of the more unsustainable claims - or greenwash - after a soaring number of compliants form the public. Recently British Gas, Shell and Scottish & Southern Energy have been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Committee for Adrertising Practice is about to announce new plans to tighten up codes for green marketing. The ASA found that Shell had exagerated claims that it used it's waste CO2 to grow flowers - only 0.325% of its emissions where used this way. British Gas was criticised for an advert in which a blue cartoon flame falls and squashes a CO2 symbol to denite the group's green credentials. The ASA found that British Gas's claim that it's fuel was 'carbon zero' was misleading because the fuel did produce carbonm - the company just offset the emissions elsewhere. The majority of complains to the ASA are about words like 'carbon neutral' and its clear that consumers are quickly wising up tomisleading marketing claims although scientific grey areas around certain technologies and a lack of official definitions of some terms mean that sometimes policing greenwash is a challenge. Its good to see that the music industry is really spearheading a realistic and clear approach to new standards and Julies Bicycle is leading the way. Whilst a newBritish Standard BS8901 has been brought in as a benchmark for promoting sustainable management systems for live events,music industry campaign group A Greener Festival are again offering their very practical 'Greener Festival Award' in 2009 for music festivals who sign up to a 26 point action plan, implement sustainable practices, fill in a 54 question self assessment andallow independent environmental auditors to visit their site.Last year 34 festivalsearned the award includingWaveform, Glastonbury, T-in-the-Parkand Latitude in the UK, Bonnaroo and Rothbury in the USA and Bluesfest in Australia. And now Julies Bicycle is launching an credible new standards scheme called INDUSTRY GREEN. The aim of the scheme is to promote real environmental initiatives and change - and allow companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions on a year by year basis. Excitingly, the BRIT Awards 2009 CD compilation is the first of the BRIT albums to be made from eco-friendly packaging and has been awarded the industry green mark by Julies Bicycle. SonyBMG have confirmed thatthe double CDwill be packaged using FSC-certified paper (Forest Stewardship Council). This means it reduces the consumers carbon footprint by over 50%whencompared to plastictray-based packaging!