14 DAY TRIAL // Friends of the Earth Canada, the Polaris Institute, the Council of Canadians, Wellington Water Watchers and Ecojustice are the organizations that filed a misleading ad warning against international corporation Nestle, which, they say, distorted the truth in the commercials on bottled water. The largest food company in the world claims that its waters have numerous ecological benefits, and that the process of obtaining it is environment-friendly.
The Competition Bureau of Canada and the Canadian Standards Association have a very strict set of guidelines in place that regulate the way in which the content of an ad fits the reality of its manufacturing process. The group that took on Nestle claims that the company violated these laws, by introducing phrases such as "most water bottles avoid landfill sites and are recycled" and "bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world" in their ads.
"They can spin the bottle all they want, but the truth is there is no green solution to bottled water," argues Polaris Institute Campaigns coordinator, Joe Cressy, from Ottawa. The corporation, Nestle Waters Canada (NWC), supposedly broke the rules in a newspaper ad in October, "by making false and misleading statements regarding the environmental impacts of its product."
"We welcome the opportunity to show that we have, in fact, been honest in our conversation with Canadians, with the media and with government of the environmental stewardship exercised by our industry," says NWC spokesman John Challinor, who adds that the company salutes the opportunity of being able to prove that its claims were indeed founded.
"This is part of a bigger problem of what we call 'green washing. This is that producers are saying that they are doing things in an environmentally sensitive manner when the facts, on occasion, don't support it," concludes Ecojustice Canada staff lawyer, Hugh Wilkins, who says that the group asked Advertising Standards Canada to investigate whether Nestle broke the rules of the ad market or not.