The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned vaping company Elf Bar’s adverts that were using the slogan “recycling for a greener future” after finding they were misleading, reports The Guardian.

The ASA found that Elf Bar’s advert, which appeared on buses and digital billboards in London in July and August was misleading because it made out that recycling vapes was easy and could be done at home. In reality, the products have to be taken to special facilities in order to be properly recycled. According to a study by Material Focus, 260 million disposable vapes were thrown away in the UK last year which makes Elf Bar’s advert all the more problematic.
Elf Bar must now ensure that the advert does not appear again in this form and that any future ads will not mislead about the environmental impact or benefit of the products, reports The Guardian.
The ASA said in its ruling: “We acknowledged Elf Bar’s intention was for the ads to educate and encourage consumers to recycle, and that they would be undertaking initiatives that would increase consumers’ ability to do so. However, because consumers would understand from the ads that they would be able to recycle Elf Bar’s single-use vapes through a wide variety of routes including by easily accessible routes such as home recycling provisions, when that was not the case, we concluded the ads were misleading.”
A spokesperson for Elf Bar said: “We are disappointed by any confusion this advertisement may have caused. Furthermore, we regret it has distracted from the progress of our GreenAwareness recycling project … As part of the ongoing programme, we have made our product easier to collect and disassemble for recycling purposes and aim to establish a closed-loop system by 2025. We are committed to these measures and complying with the guidelines set forth by the ASA.”