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Photo-example: the cut; Photo: Getty Images
Last month, Swedish fast-fashion giant H&M was sued in New York federal court for making “greenwashing,” or false advertising, about the sustainability of its clothing. The lawsuit was filed by Chelsea Commodore, a marketing student at SUNY New Paltz who claims she was overpaid for a fashion class she offered in marketing that wasn’t really… In fact, she says, many of the brand’s Conscious Collection products advertise that they use less water to produce when they use more. H&M says the dispute is the result of technical issues.
This lawsuit may be watershed (sorry) time for fashion. Sustainability may disappear as a marketing ploy. And maybe?
H&M is one example of many fashion companies profiting from claiming that certain clothes are sustainable. And the lawsuit is the culmination of a decade of intense international debate. Of course, H&M consistently ranks high when it comes to transparency, and it’s quicker than most to document its efforts to reduce its climate footprint with solid numbers. But a study by Quartz in June found that new environmental claims for its products are misleading. This is happening globally. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority is investigating ASOS and Boohoo for greenwashing because of their vague claims.
Although the lawsuit is related to the price of the piece, the allegations in the lawsuit are read as a triumph over the criticisms and broken promises of the global fashion industry. While they use compounds that shed microfibers from fossil fuel-based plastics, they include using vague language like “close the loop” and “informed choice” to recycle old clothes to motivate customers to buy them. More, and – most important to this lawsuit – taking advantage of our collective climate guilt to make us pay more for the same quality clothes.
In fact, there are very few big brands. The fashion industry has not meaningfully reduced its carbon footprint (I haven’t even measured it, really). Textile-to-textile recycling is rare, and the industry’s so-called “recycling” is mostly in the shipping of low-value products and clothing to low-income countries around the world, the vast majority of which end up in landfills. Much “certified organic” cotton is fake, and fossil fuel-based textiles continue to dominate.
The problem with the lawsuit stems from a bigger question that the fashion industry is not ready to answer: What makes a fashion sustainable?
A decade ago, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition — whose membership now includes nearly 150 retailers, from Amazon to Reformation, as well as factories and nonprofits — was formed to answer that question. One of SAC’s goals was to create a way to measure the impact of a product and put it on the table for consumers to make better choices.
It turned out to be a very complicated question to answer. Even for the simplest products – a cotton T-shirt, for example – the environmental impacts of growing and harvesting cotton; the chemicals used for scouring, cleaning, dyeing and finishing and the dye house’s failure to treat its wastewater; Electric and coal heaters in factories; And shipping all over the world. Multiply that by a dozen materials for a complex product and again by 25,000 – the number of products H&M puts on its website in a year – and you get an idea of the scale of data collection required.
So SAC came up with the Higg Index, a toolkit that collects data on the fashion industry’s supply chain and rates it for sustainability. While Higg’s offerings include a module that collects data from factories and assigns a rating, the Material Sustainability Index remains highly controversial. Provides score cards that show on average How much water use, water pollution, fossil-fuel use, chemical use and greenhouse-gas emissions from leather to linen to PVC? (H&M chose to use this average global scale to simplify its environmental scorecard pilot project.)
But there are differing opinions on what. Really Persistent. For example, PETA has used scorecards to argue that fur and leather trade groups are more sustainable than animal products.
Defenders of natural materials say the measure doesn’t include things like synthetic microfibers, the length of time it takes for synthetic materials to fully biodegrade (200 years, maybe?), or the ease of making cheaper polyester than oil. The ever-increasing amount of disposable fashion. Another criticism of the organization is that any global average of natural materials coming from different farms around the world, not from defunct factories, would be inaccurate and misleading.
The organization prefers that interest groups stop using it to compare completely different fibers. It is said that designers should use whatever they like – for look, feel and performance – and only upgrade to a sustainable organic or recycled version.
“If you’re trying to convince someone to buy a product based on those claims, that’s false advertising,” says Maxine Bedat, author, fashion sustainability expert, and co-creator of New York State’s Fashion Sustainability and Social Responsibility Act. She says that material averages should only be used as a broad starting point, not as a marketing question on a specific product.
Most people don’t think that H&M’s brand with a cheap and fast business model can be sustainable, no matter how much organic and recycled cotton it uses. Hig CEO Jason Kibey responded to this suggestion. “If you try to do it alone, the cute boutique-y brands with pretty young founders are the only sustainable ones, you’re not moving the needle,” he says.
Higg was created in an entirely different era of “conscious capitalism,” when we thought that if we just educated consumers, they would vote for a better world with their dollars. Given how effective calorie counts are on menus (LOL), there’s not much reason to believe this. In fact, while survey after survey consumers say they pay more for sustainable fashion, we rarely do. This lawsuit could be the death knell for the revolutionary concept of “consumer education.”
Now, as the West Coast burns, the Loire River dries up, Kentucky sinks, and plastic becomes part of the geological record, both Haig and H&M are in a thorny rage, despairing that we can repair the damage. Over-drinking has taken place on our planet.
“No, brands shouldn’t do that,” Bedat says of displaying fake stats on product pages. “And if it takes a lawsuit to stop doing that, this is a powerful way to do it.” However, she points out that the practice of measuring carbon footprints for products is brand-spankin’ new territory. She and Kibey fear the lawsuit could halt the fashion industry’s modest progress in measuring and reducing its environmental impacts. “I think … we need to change and highlight the things that need to change,” she said. “But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
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