Misleading Marketing: H&M Sued for Greenwashing
H&M is a multinational fast fashion brand based in Sweden. It is the second largest international clothing retailer with 4,801 stores worldwide. With in-store recycling bins, clothes rental services, and sustainably sourced collections, what more could we ask for from a brand to preserve the environment? However, don’t be deceived, because while H&M have implemented these “sustainable” strategies, looking below the surface of their offers might make us question: are they really as promising as we might have first thought? The brand claims to be a company that stands for sustainability, but a recent lawsuit against the fast fashion franchise has accused it of “greenwashing”, promoting false information about the sustainability of its products. The case was brought to light by Chelsea Commodore, a marketing student who claimed she paid an increased price for a clothing item that was advertised as “conscious” by the brand that, as it happens, was not. She subsequently did her research to find that several pieces from H&M’s Conscious Collection are being marketed as using less water to produce when they are, in fact, using more. What’s worse? After being called out for it, the brand then alleged their disparity to be an outcome of technical issues.
Commodore’s awareness of the matter determined that H&M’s sustainability labelling, marketing, and advertising are “designed to mislead consumers” through the use of false environmental sustainability profiles.” According to the legal action that is currently taking place against the brand, H&M has created a mirage “that old clothes are simply turned into new garments, or that clothes will not end up in a landfill”, and that “recycling solutions either do not exist or are not commercially available at scale for the vast majority” of the brand’s products. H&M calls their products “sustainable”, setting aside the fact that they use fossil-fuel-based synthetics that shed plastic microfibres, in hopes of scamming customers into thinking they are buying products that are environmentally unharmful.
A further concern that has been called to attention in the lawsuit filed by Commodore against H&M is their make-believe advertising. The brand has encouraged consumers, under false pretences, to pay more for clothing items that they claimed were sustainable but were, in actual fact, not. An investigation by the news outlet Quartz was cited, arguing that over half of H&M’s sustainability profiles portrayed products as being better for the environment than they actually were and, in some cases, were entirely untrue.
H&M is just one example of the numerous fashion brands that profit from insisting that their products are sustainable. It is cases like this that show how brands are taking advantage of the word, using it purely as a marketing tool. “Retailers have been greenwashing for years”, states co-founder of RSR Research, Paula Rosenblum. “They often mask cost-savings initiatives with “green ones”. The answer is simple. Get real.” This lawsuit, along with previous ones of the same issue, stems from a much larger question that the fashion industry has not yet answered: What actually makes a fashion piece sustainable?
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