This city was known for bicycles, and now it just banned public adverts for meat and fossil fuels

Amsterdam has officially become the world’s first capital city to implement a ban on public advertisements for both meat and fossil fuel products, the BBC reported. Since 1 May, the city has been clearing its billboards, tram shelters, and metro stations of any content promoting items like burgers, petrol-powered cars, and airline travel.

If you happen to be walking by one of the city’s busiest tram stops, you might notice the visual landscape has changed quite significantly. You will see vibrant yellow daffodils and orange tulips blooming in a nearby roundabout, but the posters that once populated the glass shelters are different now. Where you might have previously seen advertisements for chicken nuggets, SUVs, or low-budget holiday packages, you will now find promotions for the Rijksmuseum or a local piano concert.

Local politicians have been very clear about their motivations for this move. They believe it is necessary to bring the city’s streetscape into alignment with their specific environmental goals. The Dutch capital has set a target to become carbon neutral by 2050, and they also hope to see local residents halve their meat consumption by that same year.

It is a massive shift for a city that has long been known for its cycling culture and progressive urban planning

Anneke Veenhoff, representing the GreenLeft Party, points out the contradiction they were trying to solve. “The climate crisis is very urgent,” says Anneke Veenhoff from the GreenLeft Party. “I mean, if you want to be leading in climate policies and you rent out your walls to exactly the opposite, then what are you doing?” She adds that many residents found it difficult to understand why the municipality would generate revenue from public spaces by promoting items that the government is actively campaigning against.

Anke Bakker, the Amsterdam group leader for the Party for the Animals, also played a major role in instigating these new restrictions. She pushes back against any claims that this is a nanny state policy. “Everybody can just make their own decisions, but actually we are trying to get the big companies not to tell us all the time what we need to eat and buy,” says Bakker.

She believes that by removing this constant visual nudge, the city is actually granting its citizens more freedom to make their own choices. She suggests that these ads have long framed cheap meat and fossil fuel-dependent travel as aspirational lifestyle choices, and removing them helps change that narrative.

While meat advertising only accounted for about 0.1% of Amsterdam’s outdoor ad spend, fossil fuel related products made up about 4%. The bulk of the advertising space was previously held by things like clothing brands, mobile phones, and movie posters. Even so, the political message here is significant because it reframes meat consumption as a climate issue rather than just a personal dietary preference.

Predictably, the industry is pushing back. The Dutch Meat Association, which represents the industry, has called the move an undesirable way to influence consumer behavior. They argue that meat provides essential nutrients and should remain visible to the public. Meanwhile, the Dutch Association of Travel Agents and Tour Operators argues that banning holiday advertisements that include air travel is a disproportionate curb on commercial freedom.

For activists like Hannah Prins, who works with the environmental organisation Advocates for the Future and collaborated with Fossil-Free Advertising, this is a pivotal moment. She compares the current shift to the historical decline of tobacco advertising. “Because if I look now back at like old pictures, you have Johan Cruyff,” says Prins.

“The famous Dutch footballer. He would be in advertisements for tobacco. That used to be normal. He died of lung cancer. That you were allowed to smoke on the train, on restaurants. For me, that’s like, whoa, why did people do that? You know, that feels so weird. So it really is like what we see in our public space is what we find normal in our society. And I don’t think it’s normal to see murdered animals on billboards. So I think it’s very good that that’s going to change.”

Amsterdam is not the first city in the region to try this, though. Haarlem, located about 11 miles to the west, was the first city in the world to announce a broad ban on most meat advertising in 2022, which came into force in 2024. Other cities like Utrecht and Nijmegen have since followed suit, placing restrictions on meat and dairy advertising on municipal billboards.

Globally, this trend is growing, with cities like Edinburgh, Sheffield, Stockholm, and Florence taking action against fossil fuel ads, while France has already implemented a nationwide ban.