- Shell and Tui Cruises mislead customers with climate promises
The German Environmental Aid (DUH) has filed lawsuits against two corporations that allegedly misled their customers with climate-related advertising. In both cases, the Hamburg Regional Court ruled in favor of DUH.
Among the defendants was the oil company Shell, which advertised a motor oil as "CO2-neutral". This is now prohibited, the court announced. Furthermore, Shell is no longer allowed to promise car drivers, as it did on a company website, to offset the CO2 emissions caused by them at a price of 1.1 cents per liter of gasoline or diesel fuel.
DUH Federal Managing Director Jürgen Resch welcomed the verdict as a "knockout for climate protection". With the court decision, "Shell's consumer deception has been stopped", he explained.
Problematic forest projects to compensate emissions
DUH criticizes the lack of transparency, i.e., information on how CO2 neutrality is achieved, and that emissions certificates from forest protection projects in Peru and Indonesia are being bought to offset the CO2 emissions caused.
Forest protection projects are not suitable for CO2 compensation in almost all cases, "as the greenhouse gas CO2 remains in the Earth's atmosphere for many centuries, while the project operators only guarantee that the trees will remain for some years to decades," explained DUH. The CO2 bound in the trees can then be released.
DUH will "continue to take action against all other companies that promote fossil products or services as climate-neutral using unsuitable compensation promises," Resch announced. He called on industry and trade to "honestly reduce the environmental and climate impacts of their products, publish the actual values so that a comparison is possible, and refrain from any form of greenwashing."
The verdict of the Hamburg Regional Court is not yet final. The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (OLG) would have to decide on a possible appeal.
Tui Cruises misleads customers with climate promises
The verdict in the climate lawsuit filed by DUH against the cruise company Tui Cruises is also not yet final. It concerns the formulation "2050 Net-zero cruise operation", which was used in an older version of the website, according to the Regional Court. The climate-related formulation is misleading because it is ambiguous, a court spokesman said.
"In the opinion of the Regional Court, the statement can be understood both in the sense that CO2 emissions are completely avoided in the cruise operation in the year 2050 and in the sense that a balanced balance is achieved with the help of compensation measures."
Strict requirements must be placed on the correctness, clarity, and unambiguity of statements in the area of environmental advertising, the court emphasized. There is an "increased need for information". Tui Cruises has not met this with a bundle of measures presented on the website under the formulation.
Tui Cruises has announced a possible appeal.
"The graph of our decarbonization plan (Climate Protection Roadmap), which was the subject of the procedure, has already been adjusted accordingly for more than half a year," a spokesperson for Tui Cruises told us on request. "Regardless of today's ruling, we will continue to consistently implement our 'Sustainability Strategy 2030' and stick to our ambitious climate goals." The company said it would examine whether to appeal the ruling.
The Federal Managing Director of the DUH, Jürgen Resch, said that such advertising is often impermissible. "Today's ruling against Tui Cruises is groundbreaking for the review of many advertising claims, with which companies claim to be particularly climate-friendly in a few years, although they are not nearly so now."
The victory against Shell by German Environmental Aid (DUH) in the court case was praised by DUH's Federal Managing Director Jürgen Resch, who deemed it a "knockout for climate protection." Resch criticized Shell's use of CO2-neutral advertising and the purchase of forest protection projects in Peru and Indonesia for CO2 compensation.
In the ongoing legal battle against Tui Cruises, the Hamburg Regional Court stated that the company's use of the term "2050 Net-zero cruise operation" was misleading due to its ambiguity. The court underscored the need for clear and unambiguous statements in environmental advertising.
