JOANNE Watkinson
HAVE YOU FALLEN FOR GREENWASHING?
Often a word or phrase is used so regularly within your industry that you assume everyone knows its meaning.
Recently, when chatting with a group who don’t work in fashion, I referred to ‘greenwashing’, without realising that this term isn’t commonplace.
As I explained the definition, it became clear that the process of greenwashing isn’t common knowledge either.
The term isn’t new. It was coined by environmentalist Jay Westervelt in 1986 and refers to creating a false impression about how your company’s products are environmentally friendly, using unsubstantiated or exaggerated claims in order to capitalise on the demand for environmentally sound products and services.
In the fashion world that translates to retailers leaning towards words such as ‘ethical’ and ‘organic’ or the more vague ‘natural’ and ‘eco-friendly’, to help their product appeal to a customer seeking more sustainable choices.
We are becoming increasingly aware of not only the environmental cost of throw-away fashion, including CO2 emissions, water pollution and textile waste, but also the human cost: dangerous factory conditions, worker exploitation and even child slavery, all in a bid to keep garment prices low enough to satisfy the fast fashion market.
As the demand for sustainability and social responsibility grows, greenwashing marketing has been deployed by lots of retailers to move the focus onto the more sustainable aspects of their collections, even if that amounts to a tiny proportion of their overall business.
If a brand claims to be sustainable, yet releases new items on a daily basis, that’s a conflict of interest.
If a brand calls itself eco-friendly, beware. There is no legal definition for this. Its use can be abused, whereas a GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) or PETA certificate can’t.
Sustainability in fashion is an ever-moving beast. Smaller brands can control their end-to-end supply chain better than larger companies, and often lead the way by making changes, such as not using plastic in their packaging and opting for compostable mailer bags, using local suppliers or joining the Voluntary Living Wage scheme.
Greenwashing simply isn’t fashionable.