Media’s Role in Cracking Down on Greenwashing
In this episode of Crash Course Fashion, hear SFF founder Brittany Sierra in conversation with Julia Gall, Marie Claire style, to discuss the responsibility of media to do their due diligence and accurately report on sustainability initiatives.
As the global climate crisis continues to mount and consumers increasingly want to align their purchases with their values, brands are responding by making sustainability commitments, setting climate goals, and vowing to minimize their environmental impact. However, as customer interest in fashion's footprint has increased, so has greenwashing — falsified and/or misleading messages that deceive the public and bury the reality of a brand's sustainability efforts concerning their product, service, or policies.
Vague buzzwords, narrowly focused cherry-picked goals, nonexistent timelines, and green claims unsupported by credible data plague the fashion industry. Without a universally agreed-upon definition of what sustainability means or established benchmark for even the minimum actions required to be considered a "sustainable" company, brands often fall into greenwashing, whether well-intentioned or not.
In 2020, the European Commission analyzed 344 consumer product claims made online about sustainability, a quarter of which were made about clothing, fabric, and shoes. Almost half of the claims analyzed were flagged as exaggerated, false, or deceptive and could potentially qualify as unfair commercial practices under EU rules.
Greenwashing has become so blatant that consumers and industry professionals alike are finding it increasingly difficult to determine which brands are genuinely committed to reducing their impact on the environment and which just want to sell more products by appealing to conscious fashion consumers.
For the media to become a positive force in fashion, a greater education on sustainability and supply chain nuance is needed.
At the root of greenwashing is a question of credibility. The conversation around fashion's social and environmental impact is often diluted by vague claims and untraceable statistics - sometimes unknowingly spread by journalists who lack the training to spot greenwashing when it finds its way into their sources. For the media to become a positive force in fashion, a greater education on sustainability and supply chain nuance is needed.
“A lot of our job as editors is going to see [the] finished product as it exists. You're not seeing the supply chain, who's sewing it, where the materials are coming from, or how the garment [has been] treated with chemicals and dyes. You don't see that as an editor” said Marie Claire style director, Julia Gall. “The information the media [receives] is coming from the brands directly. The problem is, if you're going to stand behind a product without knowing [those] aspects of [the garment], there's going to be a disconnect. "[Editors] need to have a better understanding of how clothing is made and really lean on the experts. It [doesn't] help anyone to perpetuate something that you don't 100% know what you're talking about."
As greenwashing continues to run rampant, consumer protection agencies are increasingly looking into rewriting regulations and cracking down on enforcement.
The speed of modern media also contributes to greenwashing. The explosion of digital publishing and social media has transformed the landscape of legacy journalism. Journalists are under increased pressure to produce more content with a tighter budget and, in many cases, without access to third-party fact-checking.
Rushed to churn out new content, journalists often report on a brand's sustainability initiatives based solely on the press release they receive from the brand that cherry-picks which information to share and sometimes exaggerates claims to paint the brand in the best light.
As greenwashing continues to run rampant, consumer protection agencies are increasingly looking into rewriting regulations and cracking down on enforcement. In the US, an effort led by denim label Amendi and policy collective Politically in Fashion resulted in the Federal Trade Commission agreeing to review the Green Guides, a resource outlining general principles for brands making environmental marketing claims and how consumers are likely to interpret them.
Last updated in 2012, Gall is hopeful that a review of the Green Guides in 2022 will help journalists accurately report on sustainability initiatives but still acknowledges the responsibility of the media to do their due diligence.
“With the Green Guides being updated, hopefully, fashion will be a part of that conversation. But at the end of the day, we all have to make a change. [Editors] need to start asking tough questions and actually be real journalists. It's not necessarily about reporting what's beautiful and what color is in this season. We need to start reporting about what's really going on in this industry and be responsible with the facts that we're pushing out.”
