False claims of sustainability

While the negative impacts of the fast fashion industry on the environment are being known and exposed to more and more people, greenwashing companies are often overlooked. The term “greenwashing” refers to companies that falsely advertise their products as environmentally friendly and their practices as sustainable.

“I think most brands that claim they are ethical and sustainable are not or don’t necessarily meet the qualifications or requirements to be labeled as so,” Hawkins said.

Companies that greenwash make claims about their products being made from recycled materials or are eco-friendly. Exaggerating sustainable practices in a company to consumers is also considered a form of greenwashing.

The fast fashion industry participates in greenwashing, but so did companies like Volkswagen, Mercedes, Nestle, Starbucks, and IKEA.

According to Columbia University and BBC, Volkswagen and Mercedes were both involved in a similar greenwashing scandal. The car companies cheated emissions examinations by equipping their cars with a device that identifies when it was receiving an emissions test and subsequently reduces emissions level during the test. The test results were then used in advertising and marketing campaigns to prove the low impact of their products on the environment, when in fact, Volkswagen vehicles emitted up to 40 times the permitted emission levels for nitrogen peroxide.

Greenwashing scandals are also present in other industries such as the fact that Starbucks’s strawless lid in 2018 was made up of more plastic than its previous combination of straw and cap or IKEA’s connections to illegal logging in Ukraine.

Far more companies in various industries tend to greenwash. For example, cosmetic brands, banks, and cleaning product brands have also been involved with greenwashing. While it may be difficult for consumers to recognize companies that greenwash through false advertising, there are a few common greenwashing marketing strategies and ways to reduce the chance of purchasing from a falsely sustainable company.

Typical greenwashing strategies include green by association, red herring, and bait-and-switch. Green by association uses nature around products on advertisements for consumers to make a positive connection between the product and the environment.

The red herring strategy is when a company makes one portion of their products environmentally friendly and emphasizes that line despite the rest of their products being damaging to the environment. The red herring can also occur when the product or packaging is environmentally friendly but not the other, and the product is still marketed as sustainable for the environment. The bait-and-switch tactic is employed when one actual environmentally friendly product is heavily promoted, but the distributed products to customers are copies of the product that is not environmentally friendly.