The Danish Consumer Council Think accuses the airline SAS of greenwashing and has reported the company to the Consumer Ombudsman for violating the Marketing Act. The Danish Consumer Council Think writes in a press release.
SAS offers its customers a number of rewards and the title of conscious traveler if they complete ten steps. This could be, for example, watching a video about "the future of aviation", buying "environmentally conscious" products in a shop or adding an optional amount of biofuel to their trip.
According to the Danish Consumer Council Think, this misleads the consumer into believing that small actions can compensate for the CO2 that the flight entails.
- This is misleading the consumer in the worst possible way. You do not make your flight less environmentally damaging by buying solar-powered electronics or plant-based detergent, says Winni Grosbøll, director of the Danish Consumer Council Think, in the press release.
Rejects greenwashing
Alexandra Kaoukji, press officer at SAS, denies that the company is greenwashing. The initiative is not about offsetting emissions, but about offering the company's customers more sustainable options, she says.
- Conscious Traveler is also not designed to get members to fly more, but to encourage them to make more conscious choices when they have decided to travel and have the opportunity to do so - for example, to purchase SAF (sustainable aviation fuel, ed.) for their trip, she writes, among other things.
According to the Marketing Act, a company must be able to document this if it highlights products as particularly ethically correct or less harmful to the environment than other products.
It can be described as greenwashing if a company markets green initiatives with untrue or exaggerated statements.
Not the first case against an airline
In January 2025, the Consumer Ombudsman reported the airline KLM to the police for using misleading statements about sustainability in a radio advertisement.
A radio advertisement broadcast in 2023 stated that you could travel "more sustainably" by flying with KLM. The justification was that KLM would use "a lot of sustainable fuel" in the future.
However, it was only said that one percent of the aviation fuel used by KLM would be replaced with fuel that, according to EU regulations, can be categorized as sustainable fuel.
Therefore, Consumer Ombudsman Torben Jensen believed that KLM was talking too much when it said that it had taken "a big step" towards traveling more sustainably.
/ritzau/
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