Paris ad hacks target « most polluting sponsor of the Olympic Games » – Toyota
25 Juil 2024
Press contact: Sonnie Bird, 07547 320072, brandalismproject@gmail.com.
Activists have blasted Toyota’s sponsorship of the upcoming Olympic Games with more than 100 ad-hacks in prominent locations in Paris and five other major French cities. The guerilla artworks highlight the automaker’s greenhouse gas emissions, which are higher than many fossil fuel companies, and criticise the Olympic organising committee for accepting sponsorship from major polluters.
Posters were installed in bus stop ad spaces Paris, Lille, Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Strasbourg and Rennes between July 22 and July 25 in an action coordinated by Paris-based Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire (RAP) and the Brandalism collective, responsible for previous actions targeting Toyota and Shell.
Sonnie Bird from Brandalism said « As Olympians in Paris go faster, higher and stronger, Toyota keeps getting dirtier, deadlier and more polluting. With Toyota as a sponsor, the Paris Olympics will leave a legacy not of gold, silver and bronze but of pollution.
“As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, Toyota stubbornly continues to produce millions more oil-powered vehicles every year. If Toyota were a country its greenhouse gas emissions would outrank all but eleven of the countries participating in this year’s Games, many of which are already on the front lines of climate breakdown.”
One of the artworks, by artist Michelle Tylicki, shows a gold medal featuring the Toyota logo dripping in oil, with the words “Toyota, proud to be the most polluting sponsor of the 2024 Olympic Games.” Toyota’s annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 totalled 575 million tonnes of CO2, higher than the national emissions from France and equivalent to 1.5% of global CO2 emissions in the same year.
Several of the posters show famous artworks exhibited in the Louvre gallery, such as Da Vincis’ Mona Lisa and Van Gogh’s Starry Night, manipulated to include Toyota vehicles and the pollution they cause, with text reading « Art belongs in Paris. Giant polluters do not.”
Khaled Gaiji from RAP said: « In response to the invasion of public space by the nefarious companies that sponsor the Olympic and Paralympic Games, we have covered up and hijacked advertising billboards in several cities in France. The posters we’ve put up draw attention to the pollution and greenwashing of these brands. We claim the right to respond to their advertising hype and demand an end to the funding of sport by devastating multinationals. »
The 33rd Olympic Games, set to start on Friday, July 26, has been dogged by criticism from climate groups over sponsorship by major polluters, including Toyota, Air France and steelmaker ArcelorMittal.
A recent report predicted that this year’s Olympics will be the hottest on record, and included testimonies from Olympians who have faced extreme heat in sport.
In the report, British marathon swimmer Amber Keegan said: “extreme heat is dangerous no matter how much prep you have done. We do all get in that water knowing that people have died from the heat. It’s not something to be trifled with.”
The UK-based Badvertising campaign has calculated the combined carbon emissions attributable to the Olympics sponsorship deals of three most polluting sponsors as equivalent to eight coal power plants running for one year. Toyota’s 10-year sponsorship deal alone will contribute an estimated 29 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, or 37.6 kg CO2e for every Euro of sponsorship, through the increase in vehicle sales such sponsorship prompts.
Andrew Simms, from the Badvertising campaign, said: “Paris, host to what was meant to be the ‘greenest games ever’, will be plastered with promotions for one of the world’s biggest polluters, and the Games biggest sponsor, Toyota. In a summer set to be the hottest on record, our research shows that sponsorship from major polluters like Toyota will add millions more tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, heating the planet.
“Sport, its events, athletes and fans are especially vulnerable to climate breakdown. Allowing polluters like Toyota to use the Olympics for greenwash is blowing Olympic smoke rings in our faces. For the Games to be truly clean and green the IOC needs to drop polluting sponsorship.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
Photos with artist names and locations in Paris, Lille, Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Strasbourg and Rennes: https://nuage.liiib.re/s/jYr55bnk3rcwCna
Brandalism is an international collective of artists and activists that confront the power of big business and their public relations advertising. The collective uses ‘subvertising’, the art of subverting advertising, as a right of reply to counter advertising by major polluters. http://brandalism.ch/
Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire (RAP) is a French association combatting the direct and indirect negative effects of advertising activities on the environment and citizens. Since 1992 the group has responded to social, economic and environmental challenges by acting for freedom of reception and sobriety in advertising. https://antipub.org/
Toyota is the world’s most polluting carmaker. It is widely recognised as a laggard in the shift to electric vehicles. Toyota has been a prominent critic of electric vehicles, preferring to promote hybrids, which remain reliant on fossil fuels. In 2023, less than 1% of Toyota’s total global sales were fully electric battery EVs, whilst hybrids made up 35% of all sales. Toyota’s supply of the hydrogen-fuelled Mirai for the 2024 Games has been strongly criticised by scientists, who in a letter to the International Olympic Committee highlight that 96 percent of the world’s hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels.