Ad panels say ABA overstated PET bottle recycling efforts

Following a review that said it overstated marketing claims around plastic bottle recycling, the American Beverage Association plans to change parts of its long-running "Every Bottle Back" advertising effort.

The National Advertising Review Board said March 16 that the ABA national cable television ad campaign around "Every Bottle Back" made aspirational claims incorrectly suggesting that the industry was using "significant" amounts of recycled content in its plastic bottles.

It also questioned ABA statements about its partnerships with other groups, saying it overstated its work with the World Wildlife Fund, The Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners.

NARB said the review was done by the National Advertising Division, an advertising industry self-regulatory body, as part of its normal work.

NAD determined that some of ABA's claims were reasonable but flagged others. ABA represents major non-alcoholic beverage makers including Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Keurig Dr Pepper.

"NAD recommended that ABA modify several claims that NAD determined overstate the extent to which plastic bottles currently sold by ABA members are made from recycled plastic resulting in a reduction in plastic waste, and the results of its partnership with several organizations regarding reducing plastic waste," NARB said.

In a statement, the Washington-based ABA said it disagreed with some of the NARB and NAD conclusions but would work to change its campaigns.

"American Beverage fully supports accuracy in environmental statements and appreciates NAD's and NARB's efforts to ensure such accuracy," ABA said. "We also appreciate NAD's conclusions that many of our claims are substantiated, including that our member companies are designing 100 percent recyclable plastic bottles and are increasing awareness of that fact.

"We disagree with their conclusions regarding the statements related to our partnerships and the recycling process but will comply with the NARB decision and explore how best to modify them," ABA said.

After the NAD announced its decision in November, ABA appealed. But NARB said March 16 that it agreed with the NAD analysis questioning ABA's language.

In particular, NARB said an ABA statement that the bottles are "collected and separated from other plastics so they can be turned back into material that we use to make new bottles" made an unsupported claim to consumers by suggesting that a "significant amount" of recycled plastic is used in new bottles.

"The NARB panel noted that while ABA may have intended simply to explain the potential for bottles to be recycled, the ad went beyond that, conflating current recycling practices and outcomes with aspirational practices and outcomes," NARB said.

"Therefore, the NARB panel recommended that the advertiser modify the video claims to further clarify that these statements relate to aspirational goals," NARB said. "Further, the NARB panel stated that the claims should not convey that there is current significant use of recycled bottles by industry to produce new bottles or any current significant reduction in plastic if that is not the case."

ABA launched the bottle recycling and advertising campaign in 2019, which included public awareness campaigns to educate consumers about PET bottle recycling and a $100 million ABA fund to give grants to cities to improve collecting, sorting and processing of beverage containers.

At the 2019 announcement in Washington, ABA estimated that the campaign would result in collecting an additional 80 million pounds of recycled PET per year, which would only increase the PET bottle recycling rate by about 1 percentage point.

NARB said it lauded the ABA's goals and said the beverage companies could make future claims as its goals are attained, but it cautioned the industry against making excessive statements about its work with partners, including around efforts to modernize recycling infrastructure.

NARB is part of McLean, Va.-based BBB National Programs, which was spun off from the Council of Better Business Bureaus in 2019 to administer self-regulatory industry programs like NARB.