BERLIN (Reuters) -Apple can no longer advertise its Apple Watch as a “CO2-neutral product” in Germany, following a court ruling on Tuesday that sided with environmentalists in finding that the U.S. tech company had misled consumers.
Apple had promoted the device online as “our first CO2-neutral product”, a claim found by a panel of judges to be unfounded and in violation of German competition law, according to a statement from a regional court in Frankfurt.
Apple declined to comment on the ruling, which can be appealed.
Apple based its claim of carbon neutrality on a project it operates in Paraguay to offset emissions by planting eucalyptus trees on leased land.
However, the Frankfurt court said that leases for 75% of the project area were not secured beyond 2029 and that the company could not guarantee these contracts would be extended.
“There is no secure future for the continuation of the forest project,” the statement said.
Environmentalist group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), which brought the case against Apple, hailed the ruling as a success against “greenwashing”.
“The supposed storage of CO2 in commercial eucalyptus plantations is limited to just a few years, the contractual guarantees for the future are not sufficient and the ecological integrity of monoculture areas is not guaranteed,” DUH head Juergen Resch said in a statement.
(Reporting by Rachel More, Editing by Friederike Heine)
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