An advertising watchdog has ruled that Ancol Pet Products made misleading environmental claims about its dog waste bags on its website.

The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint about the pet company’s statement on its website that its waste bags were ‘biodegradable to lessen your dog's impact on the environment’.

The complainant, who believed that the bags were made of a material that was not capable of biodegradation, challenged whether the claim could be substantiated.

In response Ancol Pet Products Ltd said the bags were produced using a controlled-life plastic technology, which was added during the manufacturing stage of production of their bags.

The company stated that the material used converted everyday plastic products into materials that were biodegradable in the open environment. It added the bags were oxo-biodegradable because they contained an additive which catalysed the degradation process in the presence of oxygen, so that plastic broke down much quicker than ordinary plastics.

Ancolsaid this process meant that the product was converted to organic material, which was then bio-assimilated by bacteria. The timescale for complete biodegradation, therefore, was much shorter than conventional plastics.

The manufacturers of the bags (Symphony Environmental Ltd) and the trade association for the biodegradable plastics industry (the Oxo-Biodegradable Plastics Association) provided a range of material, including scientific studies and opinions, which they believed substantiated the claim that the product was biodegradable.

However, in upholding the complaint against Ancol, the ASA stated:

“The ASA considered that consumers would expect that in order to dispose of their dog waste bags responsibly ‒ as called for expressly and by implication (with pictures of litter bins) in the advertiser’s own packaging ‒ they should use bins provided specifically for the purpose of dog waste disposal in open spaces, such as parks, or other general waste bins.

“In that context, we considered consumers would understand from the claim ‘These thick waste bags are biodegradable to lessen your dog’s impact on the environment’ that by swapping conventional plastic dog waste bags for the advertised product and disposing of fouled bags responsibly, they would be reducing their impact on the environment.

“Because consumers would understand that the ability of the bag to biodegrade meant that by disposing of fouled bags responsibly they would be reducing their impact on the environment, and because the bag was not biodegradable under the conditions which a responsibly disposed-of bag would find itself, we concluded that the claim ‘These thick waste bags are biodegradable to lessen your dog’s impact on the environment’ was misleading.”

The ASA has ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form and told Ancol Pet Products Ltd to ensure that future advertising did not mislead by making environmental claims, such as “biodegradable” unless they held adequate evidence to substantiate those claims for the likely conditions of use of the bags.

The full ruling can be found by clicking here