Description
The Société de transport de Montréal (STM), Montreals transport agency, announced on 30th of September 2024 that it will ban ads associated with tar sands, oil and other pollutants in their metros and buses.
"We don't like oil company ads. We don't want them, and personally, it makes me sick," says the president of the board of directors of the Montreal carrier, Éric Alan Caldwell, bluntly in an interview.
Transgesco, the company's commercial subsidiary that manages, among other things, advertising displays in the metro and on buses, claims to have adopted, in recent months, a "series of measures to better regulate advertising displays [in] the public transportation network." These measures specifically target advertisements that transmit false or misleading information giving the impression that a product is more eco-responsible than it actually is.
"We want to contribute to the financing of public transport in a responsible manner, hence the importance of establishing clear guidelines against the perverse effects of greenwashing practices in advertising," explains Transgesco's Deputy General Manager, Charles A. Gratton.