ESG Enforcement Tracker

Key facts:

The ASA has ruled that a paid Google ad by Nike Retail BV, seen on 18 June 2025, breached the CAP Code because its environmental claim was misleading. The ad promoted “Nike Tennis Polo Shirts – Serve An Ace With Nike […] Sustainable Materials”.

Nike argued that the ad was framed in general terms and intended to highlight the availability of products across its website that used recycled materials, rather than making a claim about a specific product. They said consumers would understand “sustainable materials” to mean that some Nike products contained materials designed to reduce environmental impact, with further details available on individual product pages. Nike also stated that character limits on Google ads restricted the level of detail that could be included, and confirmed the ad was taken down in June 2025.

The ASA found that the CAP Code requires environmental claims to be clear, appropriately qualified, and supported by a high level of evidence, particularly where claims are absolute. The ASA ruling referred to the Competition and Markets Authority guidance ‘Complying with consumer law when making environmental claims in the fashion retail sector’. The ASA had regard for the guidance in assessing compliance with the CAP Code. The ASA stated that the ad did not explain what “sustainable materials” meant, nor did it limit the claim to certain products or stages of the product life cycle. The ASA considered that the claim was not sufficiently constrained by space and, without qualification, was ambiguous. In context, consumers were likely to interpret it as meaning that all Nike tennis polo shirts were environmentally sustainable across their full life cycle.

As Nike did not provide adequate substantiation for the claim, the ASA concluded that the ad was likely to mislead and therefore breached the CAP Code.