By Elisa Riccio
Due to the menace of climate change every aspect of our lives has been touched. A sense of responsibility has grown in us as people and citizens, and at Institutional level, a sense of commitment came out in the name of accountability.
The Fashion world has not remained silent, maybe for a sense of responsibility or maybe for a fear of being left out, or even attacked.
Undeniably, (Fast)Fashion Industry and clothing production do have several impacts on environment and on public opinion. From this phenomenon, different perspectives have been studied and several ways of acting have been embraced. For what concerns the most famous fashion industries, they promptly declared their engagement with sustainability and recycling of textiles and of energy used to produce their products. Various campaigns have been going on, especially in the last years. All of these actions and engagements might seem good, might mean that we are all really going in the same just direction…
But, like almost always happens, with great power comes great responsibility.
And problems of consumers damage (here you can find an analysis carried out by Greenpeace on misleading advertisement actions from several famous Fast-Fashion brands). A phenomenon called “Greenwashing” has emerged and with it a number of measures have been adopted at a European Union Level.
What does “greenwashing” mean?
With “greenwashing” we refer to all of those marketing and communication strategies through which companies and firms aim to present themselves as caring and working for the safeguard of the environment. Without any proof of actual engagement, most of the time we are looking at a shell environmentalism.
In this article we will see how this also happens in fashion industries and how the European Union has taken action to stop them and protect its citizens.
Famous (or popular) fashion maisons and industry greenwash us when they present themselves as followers of “green policies” and sincerely caring about environmental topics. Examples are taking actions and declaring how their materials, production techniques and processes, and basically how the core essence of their activities is sensitive to environmental topics, climate change, sustainability, stating that their processes use sustainable energy sources and disposable textiles. This happens through advertisement, public statements, social media posts and finally ends up on the labels that we find attached to our clothes.
The EU coming to the rescue
The European Union has a great responsibility for making possible a transition to a sustainable, transparent, and responsible textile-fashion industry. And everyone expects Brussels to do something.
In March 2022, the European Commission proposed “new consumer rights and a ban on greenwashing”, empowering consumers and “giving them strong new tools to make informed choices” – these are the words of Věra Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency. The proposal was also to amend the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive prohibiting a “black-list” of unfair and misleading commercial practices for what concerns, for example, “vague environmental claims” or the display of a “voluntary sustainability label” without it being verified.
Photo:European Parliament official social media accounts.
On January 15th, 2024, the European Parliament published a Topics Paper on greenwashing and how to stop it: in order to put an end to it while protecting consumers and promoting environmentally-friendly decisions, “the European Parliament is working on an update of existing rules regarding commercial practices and consumer protection”.
On January 17th, 2024, the Members of the European Parliament approved the directive that will make “product labelling clearer and more trustworthy”; currently we are waiting for the final Council approval. Once approved, published and transposed into national law, the directive will work together with the Green Claims Directive, currently under discussion. These measures permit “green claims”, including information and communications, only on a scientific and recognized basis, with evidence that must be provided.
The EU’s aim is basically to provide more information to consumers, ending all of those unfair and misleading commercial practices and communications that go to prevent sustainable purchases.
A matter of choices
Fast fashion is one of the sectors that intrinsically collide with what we intend with “sustainability”. It breaks out with new collections all the time.
Despite the efforts of some – a quick look at the Sustainable Apparel Coalition‘s works could be interesting – the bottom problem still persists: there is an overproduction of textiles, clothes and accessories.
Photo: Greenpeace Italia
Data show that, on average, a European citizen tosses away 11 kg of clothes a year.
In a world that is running faster and faster, the fashion choices, especially among younger people, tend to be almost unconscious, dictated by the need to be trendy and fashionable. Young people need low prices in order to be able to fill their closets with more and more clothes following what is cool at the moment.
The fact is that, as consumers, our choices actually matter in shaping a sustainable future. The measures illustrated in this article tell us that the European Union is helping us protecting our right to be properly informed about what we are buying, and if the brands we love the most actually believe in what they advertise. After all, the choice remains in our hands.
Will the EU actions be enough? Will European citizens take the most out of them?
To posterity the arduous sentence.