Greenpeace: misleading advertising
European PVC manufacturers can now celebrate one of their few victories over Greenpeace. The environmental organization has been condemned to remove billboard advertising spread over Great Britain in an advertising campaign against PVC. In Brazil, the PVC Institute is publishing this information. Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority - ASA reached this verdict on an advertising campaign for a biodegradable credit card manufactured from cornstarch plastic, that Greens in partnership with the Co-Operative Bank presented as an alternative to PVC cards.
The campaign was launched in Europe in April 1997 and reached Brazil in May. Card manufacturers, worried about Greenpeace’s advertising of an alternative card, decided to sue and were represented by the British Plastics Federation - BPF and the British Packing and Industrial Film Association - PIFA.
Based on opinions issued by US Environment Protection Agencies and the US Ministry of Agriculture, Fauna and Fish, the ASA concluded that Greenpeace’s advertising had denigrated PVC in order to promote another product.
As far as the PVC Institute is concerned, Greenpeace performed a disservice to people through untruthful advertising. Francisco de Assis Esmeraldo, President of the PVC Institute, states that organizations, which defend PVC, have always been open to dialogue, whereas Greenpeace “is an NGO, which is neither trustworthy nor correct, acts unethically and is undemocratic”.
The credit card promoted by Greenpeace is made of biopol, a corn starch-based polymer with a much faster rate of biodegradation and absorption into the soil than PVC. This, however, does not mean that production of its raw material - corn - requires fewer chemicals than PVC production. Genetically modified seed required for large-scale production of corn as food or raw material for plastics needs twice the volume of pesticides as that necessary for corn crops from ordinary seed.
This increased consumption has prompted Air Products Polymers to increase its production of amines (a reaction between alcohol and ammonia for the manufacture of pesticides) from 25,000 to 50,000 tons p.a. In Brazil, Air Products’ chief customer is Monsanto, one of the world’s leading producers of genetically modified seed with a higher resistance to herbicides.
Source: Agência Estado
[ Home Page ] [ Vinyl Info ] |