Edinburgh says stop fossil advertising in the city

The Scottish city bans billboards advertising SUVs and cruise ships because they are "incompatible" with emissions reduction objectives.

• Edinburgh is “serious” about reaching its 2030 net zero emissions target, the city council says.
• The Scottish city joins the many British cities that have adopted this choice, including Sheffield, Bristol, Liverpool and Somerset.

A city that promises to eliminate its net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 cannot at the same time host billboards for oil companies, cruise ships, airlines and SUVs.This is it the line taken from Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland with 500 thousand inhabitants, arguing that the promotion of such products is "incompatible" with the objectives of reducing CO2 emissions.

Edinburgh really wants to meet its climate goals

The decision, reported by Financial Times, provides precisely the advertising ban for airlines, fossil fuel-powered vehicles and even weapons manufacturers.Ben Parker, a Green councilor on Edinburgh city council, said the Scottish city is "serious" about achieve its goal of zero emissions by 2030 and cannot “allow council space to be used to promote companies from fossil fuels”.

But it's also there who criticizes the decision:Trade bodies including the Advertising Association argue that advertising brings in revenue that the municipality can use to make positive changes, the British magazine reports Campaign.

Liverpool, Bristol:other British cities

The move it is not the only one of its kind:similar measures have been adopted by cities such as Sheffield (which introduced a ban on advertising for a range of products, including e-cigarettes, fossil fuel cars and unhealthy food products), Bristol, Liverpool and Somerset.

Measures that come after a series of important decisions by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), including the ban one year ago, the first of its kind, to advertise a Toyota SUV for environmental reasons.The commercial, in fact, showed two vehicles traveling along a rocky road in a savannah-style landscape:according to the ASA, an advertising of behavior that damages nature.

And in Italy?

Outside of Great Britain they are there are countless examples of this type.Banning fossil fuel advertising - flights, cruises, cars - was the central theme of the Ban fossil ads conference, which was held in March in Brussels.The organizers supported a European citizens' initiative (ICE) – the tool that allows citizens to ask the European Commission to propose legislative acts – to ask for a ban on fossil fuel advertising.

The Dutch also participated in the initiative Advertisement Fossielvrij (Fossil free advertising), who thanks to his work made Amsterdam the first city in the world to launch a fossil ad ban.Today, 14 cities in the Netherlands and over 30 worldwide, including Sydney and Stockholm, have a ban on fossil ads.Since 2019, there is a newspaper in Sweden, the Dagens Etc, which has banned fossil advertisements from its pages:a decision that earned the newspaper more subscribers.

On the site “World without fossil ads”, launched in 2023, there is updated information on initiatives and actors fighting against fossil advertising, with success stories, tactics, tools, scientific documents to support. Who knows, some administration in Italy does not decide, sooner or later, to take example from these initiatives.