Sustainable Blog Edition #32.
Sustainability is hugely important for the future of the fashion industry as fast fashion consumption continues to grow. Brands have come under increasing pressure for environmental impact transparency and movement towards more sustainable production. Many companies such as H&M or Asos have come under scrutiny for attempting to greenwash their environmental impacts.
What is greenwashing? It is an effort to make something appear sustainable when in reality it is not. With the fashion industry this takes face in providing ambiguous numbers / diagrams / or comparisons that show misleading information on how a product is produced. The absence of regulation has allowed many companies to operate in a massive gray area with how they support their claims of sustainability.
For years now consumers have been trending towards seeking out sustainable fashion, which is good. However, that also means there is a large-scale opportunity for profit in sustainable branded garments, and that opens the doors for brands to seek out loopholes in the industry.
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) has been around for a decade but has been in the headlines more lately. The SAC is a voluntary industry led group which created the Higg Index; a standardized tool for companies to measure and share environmental impact. There are numerous issues with how the Higg index is utilized and the Coalition as a whole. There will always be an conflict of interest if a overseeing group is made up of those it is attempting to regulate. The primary issue with the system in place is inaccurate data from a variety of sources and improper methodology for calculating true environmental impact.
H&M has attempted to use this system to show customers a nutrition style label, which shows customers a garment's impact based on a set of tiers and percentages of waste. The issue with this kind of system is it varies from company to company, displaying the questionably effective data from the Higgs index in ways that manipulate the customer's view of the product. H&M received many accusations of greenwashing and has since removed these charts.
Lazy Hype attempts to minimize our carbon impact in every area possible. We are transparent with what our materials are and how they are produced. Additionally we keep it local, manufacturing our products in the United States allows us to reduce our carbon footprint. By simplifying our production and providing transparency we hope to help the industry make a step in the right direction. You can read more about our sustainability effort in our Sustainable Gloss.
Sources:
https://www.businessoffashion.com/podcasts/sustainability/the-debrief-fashions-greenwashing-problem/
Cover Image: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26012022/public-relations-fossil-fuels-greenwashing/