“Contains recycled polyester”. If you’ve been out shopping lately to refresh your wardrobe, you might have come across a similar wording. Maybe even written in green letters on an FSC-certified cardboard label. And then the blouse, blazer or trousers must be a sustainable choice? The answer is more complicated than you get the impression in the store. Most likely, it does not say that the recycled polyester often originates from plastic bottles, which instead of being made into new bottles again and again, now end up in the landfill when the clothes are no longer used. The cardboard label also says nothing about microplastics or how much energy, water and chemicals are required to recycle the laundry. In other words, it is not easy to be a consumer if you want to buy “sustainable fashion”. The fashion industry is one of the world’s most polluting industries: Production emits more than the global aviation and shipping industries combined. Today, on average, we wear our clothes only seven times, because fast fashion is so cheap and of poor quality. Every second, a truckload of clothes is therefore dumped in landfills all over the world, and today only one percent is recycled into new textiles. The list goes on. It’s just not a good ad text when you’re selling a lot of clothes. At the same time, the global industry has so far been very little regulated. There are therefore particularly many examples of greenwashing in the fashion industry. A report in 2021 found that 59 percent of green claims from European and British clothing brands are misleading. H&M is the top scorer, i.a. Because their so-called Conscious Collection consists of large amounts of synthetic fibers that are made from oil. But now something is finally starting to happen. H&M has removed its “Conscious choice” category after the consumer authority in the Netherlands determined last year that it is greenwashing. In the UK, competition authorities are investigating ASOS and Boohoo over vague sustainability claims. In Denmark, Zalando was recently reported to the Consumer Ombudsman for marketing goods as sustainable with a range of home-made certifications. At the same time, the legislators are finally about to start doing something about the fashion industry’s enormous pollution when the industry is now not moving fast enough. Last year, the EU finally came up with a long-awaited and ambitious textile strategy, and in the USA the country i.a. The Fashion Act. They are predicted to be able to change not only what brands can write on their clothing labels, but also manufacturing and design for longer durability. They are about everything from fines for greenwashing, digital “product passports”, so that the materials in the clothes can be traced, and that the clothing companies have to pay for the waste management of the millions of tonnes of clothes that end up in landfills every year. So far, however, there are only legislative proposals that must first be discussed and revised before they can come into force. France has chosen not to wait for that, so from this year large companies have had to inform consumers about the content of harmful chemicals and microplastics in each item of clothing, how it is repaired and recycled, traceability of the materials etc. Smaller companies that sell clothes, shoes and textiles must follow within the next two years. The critics ask whether an industry with such complex value chains has enough control over the data to be able to give consumers the history of the clothing’s overall environmental calculation. And whether the customer in the store can relate to the t-shirt’s climate footprint on the planet. But with the new legislation, reliable documentation is now indispensable. At the same time, journalists and other watchdogs can more easily hold especially fast fashion brands to account for the biggest problem: the 100 billion items of clothing that are produced each year. Because no, the way global consumption looks right now, you’re not doing anything good for the planet when you buy a new t-shirt. Regardless of whether it is made from organic cotton or recycled polyester.
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Analysis: In France, you can now trace your t-shirt’s harmful chemicals and microplastics
