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Writer's pictureMadara Šabanova

Greenwashing in the fashion industry!

Updated: Mar 6

What is Greenwashing?


As public awareness of environmental issues grows, so does greenwashing in the fashion sector. Surprisingly, the Changing Markets Foundation discovered that nearly 60% of green claims made by 12 large brands in the UK and Europe were unjustified or deceptive, according to a recent study.


As soon as sustainability become a hot topic and consumers started to pay attention to where the products come from and how they are made the big fashion brands jumped on-trend and started to use sustainability as a marketing trick. It would be great if indeed they would take sustainability seriously and make decisions based on environmental benefit and not increase sales with greenswashing.


Here I am coming for big fast fashion brands that most of you love and might have just fallen into the trap with idea that these brands are trying to make a difference so you buy from their special sustainable or recycled lines.

Let's look at Zara, this brand keeps putting on labels - recycled materials, eco-cotton etc. But did you know that recycled material is just the paper tag they used and the packaging? In idea, they don't lie but they deliberately provide this information in a way that consumers believe that the whole garment is made from recycled material. And let's look and H&M, they are inviting you to bring your old clothes to shop for "recycling" and then you get a discount to shop for new items from them. Did you know that the clothe you bring to recycle end up in landfill anyway?


If these companies would really care about the environment they would lose huge profits. Being sustainable means consuming less. Investing in one piece that will last you years. Big brands especially fast fashion wants that you buy a new item every 2 weeks. If you buy from them every few years they lose huge profit.

While smaller luxury artisan brands know that you can still make a profit and be sustainable as long you ensure the quality of your product and you have great design. As long the brand produces the items that solve its customer problems it will be profitable. And when we talk about fashion what could be a bigger problem than the sentence - "I have nothing to wear" when your closet is full of clothes! We will talk about this in the next blog post.

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