Nobody likes to be lied to, but on a day-to-day basis, the consumer market adopts deceptive ways to gain customers and mask their images. In the world of climate change and environmental conservation, this is something we call Greenwashing. Greenwashing in marketing is a deceptive practice that involves presenting a product or service as environmentally friendly when it is not. Some companies use greenwashing to attract customers who care about the environment, but they do not take any meaningful actions to reduce their environmental impact. Greenwashing can take many forms, such as using misleading labels, environmental imagery, vague claims, or hiding trade-offs.
Many companies today are praised for their involvement in the fight against climate change. Adopting eco-friendly methods benefits every company positively, especially in the public eye. Today’s rising temperatures and extreme weather events are translating into an increased urgency to find innovative ways to reduce emissions, within and beyond corporate value chains. However, with this, public scrutiny has also increased, this means that more companies that claim to be eco-friendly must communicate to consumers and investors what their plan is to reduce emissions in line with science, deliver on their commitments and above all keep their word. In instances where their strategies don’t add up or their claims overstate what they are achieving legal action is no longer a distant prospect.
The perfect example, is a company may claim that its product is “eco-friendly” or “plant-based”, but it may not disclose that it uses harmful chemicals or contributes to deforestation. That causes an alarm. To avoid greenwashing, the onus is on consumers to look for facts and details that support the environmental claims of a product or service. Consumers should also check the credibility and reputation of the company and look for independent certifications or ratings that verify its ecological performance. This is quite common in the fashion industry. A recent EU screening of sustainability claims in the textile, garment and shoe sector suggested that about 39% could be false or deceptive, and multinational fashion brands have been found by the Netherlands’ Authority for Consumer Markets to have been making false green claims. Talk about bad business!
Decarbonisation doesn’t happen overnight but is a process. A company needs to be transparent about what they are learning and the challenges they are facing. But to forge the path for a sector-wide shift, we need the fashion industry to play a leading role, put an end to the cycle of greenwashing, and show that climate action has indeed been taken.
“Greenwashing is like putting lipstick on a pig—it may look better, but it’s still a pig.”
-Unknown