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:
![\"\"](\"https://wildfinnwanders.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/maisie.jpg?w=649\")
![\"\"](\"https://wildfinnwanders.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/greenw-hm-1-edited.jpg?w=769\")
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.