A New Leaf?

The consumption of Fast Fashion is known to be one of the biggest contributors to climate change.  Many environmentally conscious consumers have been watching to switch to more sustainable brands. H&M, one of the main culprits, seemed to turn a new leaf and created a more sustainable collection. It was called the “Conscious Choice,” and the company claimed each product “contains at least 50% more sustainable materials, such as organic cotton or recycled polyester”. This collection was marked up more than H&M’s usual fare, and it was made to be more ‘eco-friendly’. Seeing a major fast fashion brand appear to make its first step to reduce its climate impact gave many a sense of hope. Unfortunately, this was just another case of corporate greenwashing and consumer deception.

The Quartz Investigation ​

Someone smelled something fishy about this collection. A news company, Quartz, completed an investigation in June 2022 and found that many lies were told. There is a way to weigh how sustainable fashion brands are. It is called the Higg Materials Sustainability Index, the Higg Index for short. They look into the environmental impact of clothing materials. H&M had an environmental scorecard based on the Higg Index, and Quartz found that they were lying about their scores. Their website would ‘hard-code’ the environmental scores on the website, based on the Higg Index, in the collection, so it would be positive. Negative scores were shown as positive on the website. This happened with over 100 of the 600 scores on the H&M women’s clothing UK website. After Quartz reached out, H&M, caught red-handed, removed all the scorecards from their website.

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The Lawsuit

After hearing about this blatant case of greenwashing, an enterprising marketing student at SUNY New Paltz filed a class action against H&M in the New York federal court. The complaint,  by Chelsea Commodore,  brought up that the marketing was intentionally deceptive to consumers regarding how environmentally friendly it was. In fact, some of the pieces in the “Conscious Choice” collection contained up to 100% polyester. There was a 3 million dollar settlement. It was truly astonishing how much they lied; the EU found that 96% of HM’s sustainability claims could not be verified.

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The Bigger Picture

By now, it must be clear that companies will stop at nothing to attract more customers. By hook, by crook, or by messing with their website, the money must flow. Greenwashing is everywhere you can look, and we must be constantly vigilant against it. Quartz did the right thing by digging into H&M’s claims, and other news outlets will have to step up to the plate as well. These companies will learn.

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