There are some brand names that write the blog post for you. Who Gives A Crap is one of them. The company sells toilet rolls, which means it has spent years being cheerfully rude in the service of a worthy cause. So it seems only fair that the Advertising Standards Authority has now answered the question posed by Who Gives A Crap. They do, and they well and truly got off the pot to say so.
The ruling, published on 11 November 2026, featured a paid-for Meta ad video of a person discussing the brand's history. You can watch it here. He explains that the rolls are made from either recycled or bamboo paper, and that they donate part of their profits. The ad also makes a claim for "Carbon neutral shipping." The ruling was not the result of an outraged consumer choking on their cornflakes. It came from a wider ASA sweep of carbon-neutral delivery claims, with ads picked up partly by the ASA's Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to go looking for online ads that might break the rules. So the robots have started reading the small print on toilet roll ads.
Here's the curious thing. Who Gives A Crap actually won the argument about what the claim meant. They said "shipping" was chosen deliberately, so that nobody would think the product, or the whole business, was carbon-neutral. Shipping covered the whole journey: factory to port, across the ocean (or through the air), port to warehouse, and warehouse to your bathroom door. The emissions from all of that were offset with verified carbon credits, plus a 10% buffer for good measure. That's rather more than most of us do to offset our Amazon habit.
The ASA accepted that consumers would understand the claim as relating to shipping only, not the full life cycle of the product. Readers with long memories will know that "full life cycle" is usually where green claims go to die. Not this time. The claim was confined, accurate, and properly scoped.
And yet the ASA's own complaint was still upheld.
Why? Because the ad didn't say how the shipping was carbon-neutral. The CAP Guidance on misleading environmental claims says advertisers should avoid unqualified carbon-neutral claims. It also says ads should tell consumers whether, and to what degree, neutrality comes from actually cutting emissions or from offsetting. The ASA said the ad was ambiguous on that point. There was nothing in the ad, its video or its caption explaining that the claim depended on offsetting credits. The landing page, when the ad ran, didn't explain it either.
The advertiser said that telling consumers the claim rested on verified offsets would not have qualified the claim or changed its overall impression. If the offsetting is genuine, verified and generous, why would the method matter to anyone? The ASA's answer is that it matters a great deal. The difference between not producing carbon and paying someone else to make up for producing it is precisely the kind of material information consumers need to "proceed with their consumer journey in an informed manner." A consumer journey which, in this case, ends in the smallest room of the house.
In addition, the ASA found the ad was not so limited by time or space that the information couldn't have been included. Short-form social ads are often defended on the basis that there simply isn't room for the caveats. Like the cheap toilet paper sold by some other brands, that argument is wearing thin, and it fails completely when there's a caption box sitting right there.
It's hard not to feel a little sympathy. Who Gives A Crap told the ASA it doesn't regard offsetting as a substitute for active emissions' reduction. It's investing in renewable energy across its warehouses and electric vehicles for final delivery, where the infrastructure allows. It had already started reviewing its environmental claims in May 2026. By July, the ad had been pulled, and a homepage banner now links to a page explaining the claim. The ASA welcomed all of this but upheld the complaint anyway, finding breaches of CAP Code rules 3.1, 3.3 and 11.1. Contrition, it turns out, is not a defence, merely good manners.
The lesson for advertisers is short enough to fit on a single sheet. Getting the scope of a carbon-neutral claim right is necessary, but it's not enough. You also have to show your workings, and the workings have to appear in the ad, not three clicks away on a page nobody visits. If your neutrality comes from offsets, say so. If it comes from real reductions, say that, and say how much.
The irony, of course, is that a brand built on cheerful candour about bodily functions was caught out for being coy about carbon credits. Who gives a crap about offsetting? The ASA does. And its AI is watching your caption box.
The ASA also published two related rulings about a coffee provider and a kitchenware retailer as part of the same sweep.
While you sit on your throne and ponder this decision, it's also important to remember that the ECGT, which has been applied by EU member states since 27 September, has now ruled out carbon neutrality claims based on offsetting, as we discussed recently.
The time has come to flush offsetting claims down the pan, once and for all.
