Stop greenwashing!

Hi again! Welcome back to my blog!

 

My original plan for this post was to talk about synthetics. Instead, I’ll reply to a comment from my lecturer, Dr Coleman, who asked me about organic cotton and whether it was really eco-friendlier than traditionally grown cotton. This is a very important question.

 

Picture this: You’re walking through a clothing store, peering at different clothes. Suddenly you see a different section in the store (colour-coded green- of course, it would) and you decide to take a look. You pick up the hangtag and read “Organic Cotton”. Some of us (like myself) would immediately conclude that it was really 100% sustainable.

 

Image source: https://www.trustedclothes.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/DSCF0543.jpg

 

Think again.

 

Although organic cotton is grown without relying on synthetic chemicals, it’s not necessarily more sustainable than conventionally grown cotton (that uses agrochemicals –  artificial chemicals like pesticides and herbicides). Organic cotton crops still require LOTS of water (see the image below) and are difficult to grow (source).

Image source: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/qz-production-atlas-assets/charts/atlas_B1eHHjB–@2x.png

Nevertheless, organic cotton avoids using agrochemicals that could degrade soil, pollute water underground and cause health problems to farmers (source).

 

Now for the more controversial.

 

Companies may label apparel as “organic”, or even “certified organic”, but this only means it was sustainably farmed. (source)

 

What about everything else that happens between farm and consumer? Like manufacture, garment making and transport? Companies may be concealing this information from us, as the processes in-between may not be sustainable at all (source).

 

What you saw on the hangtag may have just been a marketing strategy to lure consumers like you and me to jump on the “eco” bandwagon. The end goal of every company is to make a profit, after all.

 

Greenwashed or not, we must still play our part. Avoid washing clothes unnecessarily, take good care of your clothes (source) (it’s also our responsibility to reduce clothing waste!). This way we can maximise our garments’ life cycles.

 

In my opinion, truth is scarce in the fashion industry. So next time you go shopping, keep an eye out for greenwashing.

 

Till next time!

Cheers,

Evelyn 🙂

22 thoughts on “Stop greenwashing!

  1. The topic on greenwashing is very relevant today. But greenwashing does not just apply to the fast fashion industry, it can also cover the beauty industry. Take for example the new brand ‘ love beauty and planet’, it is marketed to be vegan and eco friendly. However, this brand is own by unilever which is a company that owns popular brands such as dove. Unilever is one of the top contributors to plastic pollution in the world. Even though love beauty and planet bottles are made from recycle ocean plastic , it is not enough to balance the scale of plastic pollution that unilever produce. Therefore the brand ‘love beauty and planet’ is not eco friendly at all and is thus an example of greenwashing

    1. Hey Sam! Thank you for your comment!

      I think the brand “love beauty and planet” (I’ll just call it LBP)’s claims need not be seen as claims made by the whole Unilever company.

      Unilever seems to be taking a more conscious approach in their business: https://www.unilever.com.sg/sustainable-living/

      I recall reading in an article that greenwashing need not be a bad thing altogether, as it could be the first step towards better sustainability. But it becomes a bad thing if the company is totally lying and uses the green facade as a cover-up for completely unsustainable practices with no intention of being responsible stewards of the earth’s resources.

      Interesting you brought this up, as I have recently become very interested in the LBP brand and saw in a blog that it was a trustworthy and not greenwashed. The blogger’s opinion actually made me want to become a regular user of this brand, and I actually started buying their products and wanted to use LBP as a permanent replacement of my usual toiletries brands. The reason why I trusted the blogger was that she had actually been to the launch of the LBP brand by Unilever in Australia. But she could have only been presented the positive side of the story by Unilever. The blog is at https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2019/05/love-beauty-planet-unilever-beauty-brand-eco-sustainable/

      There are other blogs that hold that LBP is greenwashing. One blog I read claims to have emailed the company and gives us pretty detailed info about what she (Katherine) asked the company and also the company’s reply. You can read it at https://raspberrythriller.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/companies-that-are-greenwashing/

      I’d love to discuss this brand more with you! Thank you for bringing it up.

      Cheers,
      Evelyn 🙂

  2. I totally agree that consumers like us are easily vulnerable to the influence of greenwashing as we are not able to see the production and distribution process.

    In order to prevent greenwashing, firstly, I feel that sustainable retailers should put universally recognised and endorsed logos more prominently at their price tags for their customers to see. Here are some of the logos I found : https://ecocult.com/eco-friendly-ethical-sustainable-labels-certifications-clothing-fashion/

    Secondly, more bigger retailers should fund more into R&D to develop and harness more advanced technology in order to maximise transparency and minimise greenwashing. For example, there is currently a new technology to facilitate sorting and recycling of clothes using a digital thread! This technology is created by EON who is the winner of the Global Change Award in 2017. This award is initiated by H&M Foundation and the purpose is to champion Circular Fashion and Circular Economy. (Here is the link: https://globalchangeaward.com/winners/content-thread/)

    Who knows this technology can also allow us to access the data of the clothing?Like the supplier, worker, materials used, water and electricity consumption and transportation modes? The idea is endless with technology and data!

    For now, to avoid the the traps of greenwashing, I would first find out the company’s mission, sustainability reports, Fashion Transparency Index and news. For example, for Patagonia, their mission is : We’re in business to save our home planet. But is it still enough?

    However, I still tend to go with the popular and big fast fashion found conveniently near my house shopping malls like Uniqlo, H&M and Cotton On who seem to have convinced me well with their Missions and Sustainbility Reports. But who knows, there will still be sustainability lapses and so the best way is to take care of my current clothes and re-use / recycle them!

    Thanks Evelyn for opening up this topic for discussion 🙂

    1. Hey Denise!

      Thank you for your comment! It’s great that you are critical about fast fashion companies. Yes, I agree that we should tackle the issue from the root cause by buying only what we need and caring for our clothes.

      You have given me a great idea for a new post on the R&D for clothes recycling! Thank you for sharing it with me, I’d never heard of it before.

      Till my next post!
      Cheers,
      Evelyn 🙂

  3. Hi Evelyn,
    Thank you for showing the green label , which is showing us the type of the cloth whether it is organic ( which is important to care for our earth . Even though some of the colour and patterns are attractive than the eco friendly products,I decided not to go for the wrong trend.

    1. Thank you for your comment! I am so glad that you made the decision to stop buying fast fashion!
      Yes, I agree that eco-fashion is the right kind of trend. But we need eco-fashion to be more influential! Maybe I will discuss this in a future post, since I studied this in my Project Work in JC.
      Thank you for the great idea!

      Cheers,
      Evelyn 🙂

  4. Hi Evelyn,

    Thanks for talking about this. I was a bit surprised that you didn’t really mention the difference between organic & conventional cotton in terms of yield, i.e., that organic growers produce less cotton, which increases the amt of LULCC involved in cotton production.

    Let me ask you : considering the current pressures we are facing, do you think the benefits of reducing use of agrochemicals that you get from organic cotton outweight the impacts of using more land to grow the same amt of cotton ? What questions would you ask to help you answer this intelligently ?

    jc

    1. Hi Dr Coleman,

      Thank you for your feedback. I honestly forgot to mention the difference between yields for the two types of farming. Thank you for reminding me about that!
      I think the questions I would ask are “how much value can the additional land used for organic farming provide us, compared to the value that could be obtained using agrochemicals over a smaller area of land used for conventional cotton farming?” and “how should value be measured?”.
      There may be a net benefit over time of avoiding the use of agrochemicals over a larger area, due to long-term prevention of land degradation, as opposed to using less land with intensive use of agrochemicals in conventional farming. In the short-term there may be a loss for organic cotton farming due to the extra land that could possibly be used for something else (such as more farming in the short term, and hence more revenue). But in the long term we may be preventing a loss of fertile soil that could lead to greater losses in the future due to land degradation, which is difficult to overcome.
      As for the second question, I would measure the value of both decisions (organic and conventional) by looking at the social, environmental and economic impacts. I think there may be better social and environmental benefits for organic cotton farming. On the other hand, conventional farming may be more economically attractive. But since there is a win for two factors rather than one for organic cotton farming, I guess organic farming is still worth using more land for.
      Cheers,
      Evelyn 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *