Greenwashing examples: 3 cases from real ad campaigns

Three techniques turn up in almost every ad that pushes its environmental argument too far: vague wording, visuals that imply what the copy never says, and a virtuous detail blown up until it hides the essential. The campaigns below show all three, exactly as they ran.

Once you can name these three, you will spot them in just about any campaign.

1. Vague wording

This is the most common one. A product, a service or a brand is presented with strong words, with no proportion and no information to check them against. “Sustainable”, “responsible”, “kind to nature”: each of these seems to say something, yet none commits to anything measurable.

In this ad, “sustainable” and “kind to nature” are attached to nothing: no material, no lifespan, no comparison with another kayak. The reader has no way of knowing whether the product really has less impact, or less than what.

Here the problem is slightly different, and more subtle. The brand does not claim to be responsible, it claims to be committed to it. The wording sounds cautious, but it has the same effect on the reader, and not one specific farming practice is named. A commitment is not a result, and it cannot be verified.

How to fix a claim that is too general

Three corrections usually do it, and they stack:

• Make the claim specific. On an ad praising sustainable packaging, write what is actually at stake: “70% less plastic than our previous pack”.
• Add the missing qualifier. “Contributes to”, “more … than”, a scope, a share. A claim that admits its limits is almost always defensible.
• Make the proof reachable. A link, a page, a calculation method. If the proof exists, there is no reason to keep it to yourself.

Those three points are exactly what Alios captures when it reviews an ad: the claims that stayed general, those with no qualifier, and those whose proof is nowhere to be found.

This case often shows up at brands that genuinely do better than their sector. That is what makes it delicate. Even an exemplary company cannot call itself “100% sustainable”, because every product and every service has an impact.

2. Visuals that imply too much

An image does not need to assert anything to make you believe it. A green cast, a meadow in bloom, a few leaves around the product, and the reader’s perception shifts, while nothing has been written. It becomes greenwashing as soon as no real environmental benefit supports that impression.

Everything in this visual points to nature: the bottle stands in a meadow, the red label has turned green, the light is that of a country morning. The only actual claim concerns the origin of the sweetener and the calorie count. The image, meanwhile, suggests an environmentally friendly product, which the claim never says.

The McDonald’s case is the purest of all: there is no sentence to challenge. The only change is a background colour, from red to green. That is precisely what the overall impression test used by the Jury for Ethical Advertising Practices is aimed at: what counts is not the sentence in isolation, it is what the public takes away from the whole.

It is also why a poster can mislead without containing a single questionable word.

3. Highlighting the wrong thing

The hardest technique to spot, and the most frequent in the most polluting sectors. Because communicating an environmental benefit is difficult there, the company puts forward a real but marginal initiative that barely registers in its total impact.

The initiative is real and it deserves credit. But it covers cutlery and tableware, not fuel, which accounts for most of a flight’s impact. Building a campaign around it gives air travel an image its actual footprint does not support.

The same mechanism appears in banking, where communication moves towards patronage, culture or support to charities, while the bulk of the investment keeps flowing to high-emission activities.

This technique is insidious for two reasons. You need to know the sector’s real impact to see the gap, and the initiative being highlighted is often sincere, which makes it hard to criticise without sounding unfair.

Three campaigns have been sanctioned on this ground, and we documented them: our complaint against Lufthansa, upheld by the JEP, the ruling against a Fiat ad in Belgium and the one against Transavia in France.

What the rules say

In Belgium, these three techniques fall under the advertising code applied by the JEP. In France, the ARPP sustainable development recommendation plays the same role, and the ADEME guide sets out what a claim must be able to prove.

The framework is tightening. From 27 September 2026, Directive (EU) 2024/825 bans general environmental claims that do not rest on recognised performance, along with sustainability labels based on self-certification alone. The first two techniques described here fall squarely within its scope.

For definitions and penalties in detail, see our reference article on the meaning of greenwashing, examples and penalties, and our frequently asked questions. For a broader typology, our article on the 6 main elements of greenwashing in communication complements this one.

What to do if an ad looks misleading

You can file a complaint, free of charge and without being a lawyer, with the Jury for Ethical Advertising Practices in Belgium or the Jury de Déontologie Publicitaire in France. We set out how in our guide to filing a complaint.

Every upheld complaint moves the line for the sector, and makes the next technique a little less tempting.

Checking a campaign before it runs

The three techniques described here are far easier to fix before publication than after a complaint. That is what Alios does: it reviews a visual, a video, a spot or a PDF, isolates each environmental claim, ties it to the rule concerned and proposes a rewording that remains sayable.

Image sources

• Hi Fly, First plastic free flights in the world
• Jury de Déontologie Publicitaire, La Nouvelle Agriculture campaign
• FoodBev Media (archive), Coca-Cola Life marketing campaign