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By Elaine Maguire O’Connor, Opinion Contributor 07/21/24 10am ET
Fast fashion retail giant Shein, which is set to IPO in London, has announced it will launch a more than $200 million “circular fund” to tackle waste in the fashion industry.
The company has dedicated a section of its website to the initiative. According to its materials on the subject, the company aims to decarbonize its supply chain and source materials responsibly. The company also adds more than 2,000 products to its website every day, and its production process emits 6.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.
If this sounds like a contradiction, it is. And that’s the problem with sustainable fast fashion: it’s a myth, and it doesn’t exist.
The fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for 10 percent of global carbon emissions – more than air and maritime shipping combined, polluting water, destroying forests, and releasing microplastics into the food chain. Yet few industries are as vocal about their eco-credentials and sustainability efforts as the fashion industry. Search the term “sustainable fashion” online and you’ll get hundreds of millions of results.
Like Shein, nearly every brand, from luxury conglomerate LVMH to ultra-discount online retailer Boohoo, is espousing sustainability and environmental initiatives, despite glaring and self-evident contradictions in their claims. But 2024 is fast becoming a year of reckoning, when brands will be forced to walk back their sustainability claims and admit contradictions between their marketing and the reality of their business models.
In January, California passed a Voluntary Carbon Market Disclosure Act aimed at combating greenwashing by requiring disclosures on net-zero, carbon-neutral and emissions reduction claims. A directive introduced by the European Union in March directly addresses this issue by requiring major European companies to provide scientific validation before using terms like “eco-friendly,” “biodegradable” and “sustainable.” France has taken this a step further, with its parliament unanimously passing a bill this year to impose a total ban on fast fashion advertising. If ratified by the Senate, violations would be subject to fines of up to €100,000.
Regulatory investigations in Europe have also been successful in holding brands to account: Following an investigation by the UK Competition and Markets Authority in April this year, both Boohoo and ASOS voluntarily committed to clearly marking which products fall under their eco-product lines and providing clear information about why materials are considered “sustainable”. They also pledged to refrain from using natural imagery, such as green leaves, to make their products appear more environmentally friendly than they actually are.
Greenwashing is not new: the term was first coined in 1986 by environmental activist Jay Westerfield in reference to a hotel policy that claimed reusing towels was for “environmental” reasons, but was actually to cut laundry costs for the hotel. But as the climate crisis grows in urgency (some parts of California saw record temperatures this month), more attention is being paid to the role greenwashing plays in the unfolding environmental catastrophe.
Historically, one of the obstacles in cracking down on greenwashing has been the lack of uniformity in the use of “green” terminology: Words like sustainable and eco-friendly are ambiguous and open to interpretation depending on the context and usage. Another issue is the use of avoidance tactics: Zara, the fast-fashion retail subsidiary of Spanish multinational manufacturing and retail group Inditex, committed to using sustainable paper packaging this year, earning eco-certifications while also deflecting attention from the 450 million pieces of clothing it produces each year.
For customers, it can be confusing and a struggle to distinguish between brands with a true sustainability ethos and those that exploit green jargon to gain customers. Big fashion brands with huge advertising budgets and reach on social media platforms overwhelm brands that have concrete and credible programs in place, undermining their efforts and making it very difficult for them to compete. Consumers as well as regulators are fed up with the lack of transparency from fashion retailers. It’s time to take action to stop greenwashing once and for all.
Elaine Maguire O’Connor is a writer and consultant specialising in fashion law.
