in english – Page 2

Happy earth month or should I say happy greenwashing month to the fast fashion brands. It is funny how every year on this month fast fashion brands try extra hard to appear sustainable. News flash, they arent. It is good to try to be more sustainable but these brands aren\’t making a change towards sustainability, they are just trying to appear sustainable.

What is greenwashing?

Greenwashing is when a brand spends more effort on marketing themselves as environmentally friendly rather than actually being environmentally friendly. It is a marketing tactic intended to mislead consumers into buying from them.

Examples:

\"\" — Translation: Let\’s make a change (red text) Our new way to reward H&M members sustainable choices with conscious-points (white text)

The photo on left is taken in Tampere, Finland and the right one is a screenshot from H&Ms conscious campaign that the actress Maisie Williams is a part of.

That advert makes me wonder, change to what? To being more sustainable? If that\’s what it\’s implying H&M should start with paying their garment workers a living wage. Not hiring a celeb to appear in their video. Also the \’\’conscious\’\’ points? From buying from H&Ms new collection of conscious clothes? There is no line that is conscious in H&M. This is again… A marketing trick.

On the video H&M proudly states that they are going to source their materials more sustainably by 2030. Not a massive goal since they aren\’t at all sustainable at the moment. Their goal is vague – What does “source more sustainably” mean? They haven’t defined the metric or actually outlined what they are doing. This “conscious” line that is made of more sustainable materials like organic cotton and tencel (so it says on their website) is just 1 collection of the 100 collections they produce a year. Also just sourcing recycled or sustainable fabrics doesn\’t make their brand sustainable. They\’d have to change their whole business to do that. It isn’t sustainable unless they completely stop oversupply of new clothes and minimise the use of synthetic textiles and pay their workers!

Fast fashion can\’t be sustainable. The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions each year, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. It is a major contributor to water, and air pollution and it creates a massive waste problem because fast fashion items are landifilled much quicker.

Millions of masks are being thrown away every minute and all I ask is can we please not throw them in the environment! Every day I see an abudance of masks just lying there on the ground, some just metres away from a trashcan. It\’s disgusting that some people throw their used masks to hedges, pavements and even leave them in shopping trolleys or a bus.

Most of the face masks are made from plastic microfibers and aren\’t biogradable (may fragment into smaller plastic particles) and throwing them in nature can lead to a whole new plastic issue. Masks can end up in freshwater systems and oceans and persist in the environment for up to hundreds of years. Surfers Against Sewage said they have witnessed an \’\’explosion\’\’ of discarded masks and plastics on beaches and in rivers. According to a report published by OceansAsia nearly 1,56 billion masks entered the ocean in 2020. On top of the environment, the animals are suffering as well. Some marine animals can\’t see the difference between plastic items and prey and they can end up chocking on pieces of plastic or malnurished as the material fill up their stomachs. It\’s estimated that 100,000 marine mammals and turtles, over a million seabirds and a greater number of fish, invertebrates and other marine life die from plastic pollution annually. And it\’s not only marine animals that suffer. Dogs, birds or any animals can choke on those masks and small animals can get tangled in them.

There\’s also a potential biohazard – not disposing them properly you are creating a risk of re-spreading the virus. In certain conditions the virus can survive in plastic for seven days according to some scientists.

I don\’t think there is any guidance on recycling masks so people dispose it like solid waste. Animal rescue workers suggest cutting the elastic ear straps before throwing them away to prevent animals from getting tangled. Masks will still end up in landfills or being incinerated, which produces toxic fumes but that\’s still better than in nature.

I believe we don\’t want to make things worse for the environment and the animals so I suggest using a reusable mask and washing it in machine wash. Or if you use single-use masks take them home and put them in the bin there or in a public bin if there\’s a lid on it.