Sheffield council wages war on consumerism as it bans adverts on ‘harmful’ junk food and cars to meet green targets
A council has placed a ban on “harmful” campaigns including adverts for junk food, vaping and cars in a bid to meet its green targets.
Despite facing a £17.4million funding shortfall, Sheffield City Council agreed to introduce a new advertising policy which aims to “tackles some of the impacts of consumerism, advertising and injustice”.
The ban will include campaigns for airlines and airports, junk food, vaping, gambling and cars, including hybrid models across the city.
It will apply to all council-owned billboards, its social media pages, website, publications and any sponsorship arrangements.
Marieanne Elliot, a Sheffield Green Party councillor who supports the policy, said: “If we seriously want to move away from greenwashing and promoting products and foods that are making our health worse and negatively affecting our wellbeing we need policies like this.”
The council said it expects the impact of the new policy to be between £14,000 and £21,000.
It added that the cost is “low” compared to those incurred through pressure on the NHS.
But concerns are growing that the new measure could make the shortfall worse.
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A spokesman for the Advertising Association said: “Efforts to tackle climate change are vital, and the Advertising Standards Authority is already taking significant action to ensure all claims, including environmental claims, are legal, decent, honest and truthful.
“However, this kind of action by councils simply reduces the revenue available to fund public services and denies the right for many companies to legally advertise their products and services, which provides jobs and incomes to thousands of people up and down the country.”
Elliot said she would like to see the policy go further by banning adverts for major banks that finance fossil fuel production.
It comes after Sheffield City Council were forced to issue an apology to residents following an inquiry found it had behaved dishonestly during a dispute over the felling of healthy trees in the city in a £2.2billion street improvement project.
The Sheffield Street Trees Inquiry Report by Sir Mark Lowcock found the council also misled the high court twice during the dispute.
It came after elderly residents were arrested and held for eight hours for trying to protect the trees.
Before protesters arrived, council contractors asked residents to move their cars at 4.45am to begin cutting down trees.