Tell the FTC how to regulate green ads before the Jan. 25 deadline
The Federal Trade Commission held a public hearing Tuesday (Jan. 8) on how to regulate "green" advertising and they still want to know what you think. You can watch web-casts of the workshop and anyone is invited to submit comments before the January 25 deadline. Details on how to file a comment electronically, by paper or even confidentially can be found at the FTC website here.
As the New York Times reports, the FTC has not updated their green advertising guidelines or "green guides" since 1998. More than $54m was spent last year on carbon offsets, the Times writes, and there are growing concerns about about the level of "green washing" in paid media (i.e advertising that claims to be green or environmental but really isn't). The Times article on the FTC workshops includes many companies using carbon off-sets and the ad above for Volkswagen's Forest. The ad says VW will offset the first year of carbon emission of every car they sold for four months last year. What do you think about that ad?
For once, I am not going to ask you to post your opinion in our comments, tell the FTC what you think instead. Personally, I like Norway's system for regulating green ads but I doubt we would ever do that in the U.S.
[Source: New York Times]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
zaedrus 5:07PM (1/11/2008)
The Norwegian rule (according to a post in the link above) is that a car has to "perform" in the top 33rd percentile across all vehicle classes to boast/market it's green-ness (ahem... 2007 "Green Car of the Year").
There are finer points of free speech to preserve, but I could get behind that thinking.
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