Greenwashing in the fashion industry
Nowadays, the fashion industry grows at an astonishing pace. Fashion factories produce more and more lines or seasons of clothing per year to keep the collections of clothing stores up to date with the newest trends. However, concurrently, it is getting more and more common to hear about becoming more aware of our impact on the environment as well as the fact that we should drastically limit our consumption. Therefore, to become more “green” or “sustainable” the biggest fashion companies — H&M, Zara, Primark, and many more tried to come up with a solution for creating more “sustainable” lines of clothing in their assortment. But read on, there is something called greenwashing that may be a bit of a trap and we all need to be more careful about it.
What is greenwashing?
Greenwashing in the fashion industry is about fashion brands claiming to be greener and more sustainable than they are in reality. These brands are sadly not ethical or environmentally friendly enough but what they are trying to do is to make their customers believe that they contribute positively to the environment. This strategy is unfortunately at its fullest development right now and for us — the customers, it can be quite difficult to become aware of the impact the brands have. I bet you have many times seen the labels with “organic” or “biodegradable” words or you have seen how fashion brands promote themselves on Social Media.
Obviously, these fashion brands know that many of us would like to have a positive environmental impact and change our lifestyles. Therefore, they try to appeal to us by using these keywords and creating fashion lines like “organic” or “sustainable”. But be careful about those lines and here is the reason why: the fashion brands claim to be sustainable because they know that many of us would choose to wear clothing produced more ethically and transparently. But, these brands don’t precisely define what “organic” and “sustainable” mean so they make these words sound very vague. Also, the fashion brands are very creative in avoiding saying the facts and avoiding being transparent about the production process so they often just mention the last place of the clothing production. This is because there is no law about the transparency of the production process.
So how to spot greenwashing when shopping for fashion?
The first thing I’d definitely consider is the language the fashion brands use. This is the very first thing marketers in these big fashion brands use to show that the brand is doing something and that’s the way of attracting customers. So as I’ve already mentioned, there are a couple of popular buzzwords like “care”, “conscious”, “sustainable”, “organic”, “life” etc. These words appear on the labels and also on the websites of the brands. When we see them used by global brands, it may be worth considering for example in what sense something is sustainable or how organically something is made. Definitely, it would be helpful to think and imagine these words in action.
The other thing also worth checking out is how fashion brands promote their sustainability on Social Media. It is easy to spot that many of them use images with white and green colors together with nature pictures to show that actually, they want to claim sustainability. Lastly, if the brands highly promote overconsumption with many seasons per year alongside their sustainable collections, this becomes highly hypocritical and unsustainable. And if the process of production can’t be transparent for the customers, it can be a sign that the process might not be very sustainable.
What can you do as a customer?
It may be unbelievably difficult for us to spot greenwashing in the fashion companies. It can be also challenging to come up with ideas on how to prevent it and how to contribute positively to the environment as a customer. Here, I have considered a couple of tips that you might find insightful: first, pay attention to the information fashion brands have on their websites and on Social Media. Often, they have separate website sections dedicated to environmental topics with many of the buzzwords mentioned in this post. They very often use these buzzwords and many more like “pure”, “eco-friendly” or “green” which have basically no legal definitions and therefore, no meaning. Also, keep in mind that, we, as customers have the right to know what we buy. Therefore, we shouldn’t be hesitant in contacting the brands with questions about where the clothing is made, which fabrics are used, or how the production conditions are.
Let me know what your thoughts about greenwashing in fashion are :)
