Key Points:
1.British American Tobacco is facing a $5 million class-action lawsuit accused of false advertising.
2.The lawsuit focuses on the sustainability marketing claims of the Vuse e-cigarette.
3.The investigation report alleges that its carbon-neutral status relies on carbon credits that provide no substantial environmental benefits.
4.Consumers claim they were misled into choosing Vuse products.
According to a recent report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, British American Tobacco (BAT) has been accused of falsely promoting its e-cigarette brand Vuse as carbon neutral. Consumers have filed a class-action lawsuit in the Northern District Court of California, seeking $5 million in compensation. The lawsuit alleges that Vuse was marketed as the "world's first global carbon neutral vape brand," but these environmental claims are said to have been achieved through carbon credits that did not result in any actual environmental improvements.
The lawsuit states that Reynolds Tobacco (RJ Reynolds), a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, is also named as a defendant. Consumers chose Vuse because they believed in its carbon-neutral promise, and the complaint details how the product was advertised as carbon-neutral. The lawsuit also mentions a document from British American Tobacco, in which the company views its environmental qualifications as a means to "enhance consumer engagement and brand loyalty.
According to the lawsuit, British American Tobacco continued to market the Vuse e-cigarette product as carbon neutral even after learning of false credits. More than one-third of the credits used to offset Vuse emissions came from the Guanaré Forest Plantations Project in Uruguay.
The project is an eucalyptus tree farm in Uruguay that was rated zero by an independent rating agency in 2022. This means that the carbon credits that were supposed to represent a ton of emission reductions or removals have actually had no effect.
The lawsuit alleges that this farm and three other forestry projects found to have overstated their sustainability claims occupy the majority of the credit allocation required for Vuse to be declared carbon neutral.
The court found that companies making environmental claims in marketing must diligently substantiate those claims, and that British American Tobacco and its subsidiaries failed to fulfill these obligations.
A spokesperson for British American Tobacco stated in November 2024 that the "carbon neutral" claim had been independently verified in 2021, and all advertising materials related to carbon neutrality for Vuse were discontinued in December 2023. A press release from 2021 referred to Vuse as the "world's first carbon neutral e-cigarette," which can still be found on the British American Tobacco website.
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