Laura McAndrews has seen and heard some things that the fashion industry wouldn’t want the public to know about.
For many years, his job was to find factories to produce millions of items of clothing for big American brands like The Gap and Anthropologie.
He began to worry about the environmental impact of clothing just as these multinational companies were beginning to accelerate into fast fashion.
When asked about organic cotton in 2005, he discovered how easily sustainability could be pushed aside as a priority.
“They said, ‘Laura, look at us going organic,'” he told ABC’s podcast, Threads.
“I did my little pitch to them…and they said, ‘You know what? We just did some market research. Nobody’s asking for it. Nobody cares, unless you can get organic for the same price as everything. something else. Let’s just not do it.'”
This period of his career changed his perspective on the industry.
Dr. McAndrews, now an assistant professor at the University of Georgia, sees many of the environmental and sustainability claims about clothing as little more than a public relations spin to improve the image of brands.
It’s a practice known as “greenwashing,” in which companies misrepresent the degree to which a product is eco-friendly, sustainable, or ethical.
“Greenwashing is a marketing strategy that gives you a reason to buy,” said Dr. McAndrews.
“Like putting a green label on it, telling you a cute little story, and now you feel good about your binge drinking. There’s nothing good about that.”
Is greenwashing really that bad?
As consumers realize the environmental cost of fast fashion, brands are finding new ways to market their clothing as sustainable.
They could mention the fast-growing nature of bamboo or the lower carbon footprint of organic cotton, or tout the benefits of recycled polyester (more on that later).
But the end results are not always what they are supposed to be.
Earlier this year, high street retailer H&M came under scrutiny for using fake environmental scorecards for its clothing.
This isn’t H&M’s first brush with greenwashing allegations. In 2019, the Norwegian Consumer Authority criticized the fast fashion giant for misleading marketing of its supposedly eco-friendly ‘Conscious’ collection.(supplied)
An investigation by Quartz found half of the company’s claims to be misleading, and in some cases outright misleading. In response, H&M temporarily removed the claims from its website.
Greenwashing is widespread throughout the industry, at least according to analysis by Changing Markets, a Dutch sustainability nonprofit.
They recently analyzed thousands of items of clothing and found that nearly two-thirds of the sustainability labels were unsubstantiated and misleading to consumers.
This was much higher for the worst brands; 96 percent of the claims made by H&M were found to be false.
Dr. McAndrews said the claims were often little more than a marketing ploy or a response to bad publicity about a brand’s environmental record.
“Greenwashing in general is completely reactionary,” he said. “We need to see things as they really are.”
Cotton is often marketed as a sustainable material, but its production requires a lot of water.(Getty Images: Andrii Zastrozhnov)
It is an issue that is increasingly on the radar of control agencies in Australia.
In October, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched a crackdown on companies’ false environmental and sustainability claims.
The internet sweep aims to greenwash more than 200 company websites, including some that sell clothing and footwear.
So what’s wrong with turning plastic bottles into t-shirts?
Like Laura McAndrews, Adrian Jones spent years in the fashion industry.
He began his career as a retailer for large British chains such as Marks and Spencer and NEXT. In 2014, he was CEO of APG & Co, the Australian company that owns Sportscraft, SABA and JAG.
And like Dr. McAndrews, he too became disenchanted with the excesses of fast fashion. He now works for a start-up that aims to divert fashion waste from the landfill.
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He said that one of the worst new trends, one that deserved the greenwash label, was recycled polyester, also known as rPET.
This fiber is made by melting down existing plastic and re-spinning it into a new polyester fiber.
Nike and Zara’s parent group Inditex relies on recycling single-use plastic bottles to meet its demand for polyester.
Patagonia used recycled polyester for 88 percent of its polyester clothing in the spring 2022 season, while H&M markets rPET as part of its “Conscious” collection.
It is intended to decrease reliance on virgin polyester and petroleum and the energy that goes into making new fibers. A Swiss study found that emissions were reduced by almost a third compared to virgin polyester.
But critics like Jones say recycled polyester can convince people that their purchases don’t have an impact on the environment, a claim that is far from true.
He said turning old plastic bottles into T-shirts wasn’t just diverting a problem, it was creating one.
Once it is made into clothing, most of the plastic cannot be recycled any further and will instead be thrown away.
Clothes are already difficult to recycle. Globally, only 12 percent of the material used in clothing ends up being recycled, and this is especially true for polyester, which is often blended with other materials such as cotton, preventing the fibers from separating and becoming coarse. other garments.
Jones said making clothes from plastic bottles took them out of a system where they would otherwise have been recycled into new bottles over and over again, speeding the path of plastic to landfills.
Synthetic fibers such as polyester account for about 65 percent of all fibers produced for clothing and textiles.(pixabay)
“All that recycled polyester comes from bottles. Not a single chunk comes from polyester garments,” she said.
There’s also the problem of plastic microfibers, which keep coming off clothes, whether the polyester used is recycled or not.
When clothes are made of plastic, they last a long time in the environment.
“If you put pure cotton in the soil, it will break down pretty quickly because it’s an organic product,” Jones said.
“Polyester will take 200 years, maybe 1,000 years [to break down]and during that stage it will release harmful chemicals.”
Can consumers buy their way out of trouble?
All fibers used to make clothing have some impact. Some are better than others, and often an advantage comes with a new environmental cost.
Polyester, for example, uses much less water to produce than cotton, which requires a lot of water at all stages of production, from growing to spinning to dyeing.
Dr. McAndrews said the most sustainable approach was to wear clothes many times, regardless of the fiber, and buy fewer garments.
Fast fashion companies rely on shoppers to buy into trends and consume more than they need.(ABC News: Michael Clements)
The big question eating away at activists like Urška Trunk of Changing Markets is how companies can make very vague environmental claims and get away with it.
Trunk said that in the EU, regulators were cracking down on some practices and holding fast fashion companies accountable.
In Norway, the consumer watchdog took a close look at the Higg Index, a self-assessment tool developed by the fast fashion industry to monitor the sustainability of its own supply chains.
His judgment? “The Higg Index is based on weak methodology, is misleading to consumers, and therefore should be illegal,” Trunk said.
The tool has been suspended, a move that has big implications for brands around the world, he said, “because there will be scrutiny of their green claims and they will be penalized for misleading consumers.”
The textile industry is the second most polluting industry in the world.(Getty Images: STORY PLUS )
And in the Netherlands, regulators chided H&M and sports chain Decathlon for using terms like “conscious” and “eco-design” without further explanation to back up their claims.
Although neither company was fined, both vowed to do better and donated almost a combined €1 million to various sustainable causes.
Trunk said this was a problem that couldn’t be solved simply through ethical consumption and that real solutions required regulation.
“We didn’t create the fast fashion model,” he said. “It was him [fashion] industry.
“We don’t have the ability or time to look at each item and see if it’s good or bad when we go to the store. Buying sustainably should be the default.”
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Source: news.google.com