The Debrief: Fashion’s Greenwashing Problem | The Business of Fashion

In a sea of unsubstantiated claims about sustainability, BoF’s Sarah Kent explains why it's so hard to measure impact, and what sort of regulation could be coming for fashion. Follow The Debrief wherever you listen to your podcasts. Background: Concern about the environmental impact of clothing has swelled in the past few years. So too, has the practice of greenwashing. Right now, fashion marketing is flooded with eco-conscious messaging as brands dub their products “sustainable” without doing the groundwork to back up declarations. Consumers and regulatory parties are starting to demand more. “What we're seeing is companies wanting to talk more about this, consumers wanting to know more about this, and regulators really sitting up,” said chief sustainability correspondent Sarah Kent. “It's this perfect storm where something that has been an issue that needed to be addressed for a long time is coming to a head.” Key Insights: - With little oversight outside voluntary inter-industry initiatives and no regulation, a sustainable marketing free-for-all has swept over fashion. - European policymakers looking to crackdown on greenwashing are currently considering legislation about how impact across various environmental areas can be measured. - Several snags have inhibited any real progress on measuring sustainability, including bad data, tangled methodologies, and the presence of complex social factors that go beyond ecological impact. - Some brands have begun efforts