Thanks to a collective action against H&M, this time it is in the United States that the truthfulness of the information on sustainability communicated by the Swedish giant is being investigated.

On July 22, Chelsea Commodore filed a lawsuit in a federal court in New York alleging that H&M is engaging in misleading practices and advertising “taking advantage of consumer interest” in sustainability and products that “do not harm the environment” . According to Commodore, a consumer could reasonably believe such claims, particularly considering that H&M is a nationally recognized company.

The fast fashion brand is accused of “trying to differentiate itself from other fashion products with greenwashing”. Practice deemed unfair, according to Chelsea, because it is one of the biggest pollutants in fashion. He knows that products are unsustainable and contributes to significant negative environmental damage throughout the product’s entire lifecycle, from growing fiber to incineration.

Over the past year, H&M has introduced the Sustainability Profiles.

Consumers can read the scores assigned to some products based on the environmental impact of the materials used to make them. The information is presented on green tags, in-store signage, and online marketing. They cover detailed data on water consumption and pollution, the impact on global warming and the use of fossil fuels.

Commodore claims that these sustainability profiles include information that does not match actual data for hundreds of products.

Porta come esempio un vestito nel cui profilo è indicato il consumo del 20% in meno di acqua, quando in realtà è stato realizzato con il 20 percento in più, secondo un’indagine indipendente del notiziario Quartz.  A seguito dei risultati dell’indagine, il brand ha rimosso tutte le Sustainability Scorecard presentate per i prodotti.

She takes as an example a dress whose profile shows 20 percent less water consumption, when in fact it was made with 20 percent more water, according to a Quartz’s independent survey. Following the results, the brand removed all Sustainability Scorecards submitted for the products.

“The rapid retreat by H&M and its industry peers adds to the argument that there is no such thing as sustainable fast fashion”, commented Quartz.

The lawsuit is based on the lack of a real greater sustainability of H&M’s products marketed as sustainable.

Another example shows that the Swedish brand presented “a particular product as made with 30% less water when the Higg website, where H&M procured this information, showed that the article was actually made with 31 % more water, which makes the situation worse than conventional materials,”says Commodore.

H&M makes further misrepresentations about the nature of the products in its Conscious Collection.

“It claims that they contain at least 50% sustainable materials, such as organic cotton and recycled polyester,” when in reality the products are made from indisputably unsustainable materials, such as polyester.”

These products “contain a higher percentage of synthetics than the main collection,” says Commodore, but H&M “gives consumers the impression that the materials used in its products are still environmentally sustainable”

Also under accusation is the declaration to transform old items into new ones or to exclude sending to landfills.

“Recycling solutions do not exist or are not commercially available on a large scale for the vast majority of products,” explains Commodore. “It would take H&M more than a decade to recycle what it sells in a question of days.” About 35 percent of the collected H&M products are recycled into carpet padding, painters’ cloths or insulation, according to the indictment. The remaining clothing would end up in retail stores. second-hand, landfills and incinerators. The fabrics are donated or sold to second-hand markets such as Kenya, which received 185,000 tons of used clothing in 2019. They are often difficult to reuse or sell for various reasons, including poor quality. Since most of the garments can not actually be sold, they end up in landfills.

“Consumers pay a price premium in the belief that they are buying truly sustainable and environmentally friendly clothing.”

As a result, Commodore claims that she and other buyers have “suffered financial damage”, as “they would not have bought the products or paid as much if the true facts had been known.” The accusation is therefore of falsifying the sustainability profiles with misleading and inaccurate data.

Commodore is trying to get the court to certify its class action proposal, to allow other consumers who have purchased H&M products with a sustainability profile or a misleading representation of sustainability to participate in the action.

The number of lawsuits is on the rise and the attention of regulators around the world for companies’ promotion of products and services such as “sustainable”, “green”, “environmentally friendly” is growing “,”eco”,” made responsibly”, “ethically”, etc.

H&M is under the lens of the Norwegian Consumer Authority for using the Higg Index > read here

We talked about the Swedish giant here: H&M recycles used clothes in 5 hours

Sources: Top Class Action, Class Action.org, The Fashion Law

H&M and Norrøna received a warning from the Norwegian Consumer Authority (CA), an independent administrative body tasked with overseeing the market to enforce buyer protection laws.

On June 16, the CA sent a letter to Norrøna, H&M and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (supplier of the Higg Material Sustainability Index – MSI) to point out that the environmental benefits declared in marketing campaigns and linked to the Higg index must be true and not exaggerated.

The textile industry must be aware that the commercialization of environmental benefits, which is based on the sector MS index, can easily be considered misleading and illegal. When the apparel industry and other industries use environmental claims in marketing, it is important that the claims are correct. It is a basic principle that marketing must be truthful and give a more balanced and accurate impression of any environmental benefits. Otherwise, consumers risk making poor purchasing choices.

Trond Rønningen, Director of the Norwegian Consumer Authority

In order not to be considered misleading and therefore prohibited, marketing must be supported by documentation demonstrating the claimed environmental benefits. “Many consumers experience that there are environmental claims for products and services ‘everywhere’. At the same time, consumers themselves have a limited opportunity to verify whether or not those claims are correct. So it is important for the Norwegian Consumer Agency to verify these claims, so that consumers can be as confident as possible that they rely on environmental claims in marketing and make the right choices accordingly, ”Rønningen explains on the CA website.

Norrøna

Norrøna used data from the Higg MS Index to communicate the environmental benefits of organic cotton t-shirts. The promotional message gives the impression that since the t-shirt is made from organic cotton rather than “ordinary” cotton, the t-shirt has a significantly lower environmental impact. The Norwegian Consumer Agency cannot find that Norrøna has evidence for this claim.

The reason is primarily that the Higg MS Index does not document the environmental properties of a specific product. “The only thing the Higg MS Index says is the average environmental impact of a particular material. This average does not necessarily apply to the exact product being marketed with environmental benefits,” says Rønningen.

For cotton, for example, the actual environmental impact will vary depending on the country where the organic cotton of the product in question is grown. Furthermore, the Norwegian Consumer Agency pointed out that the research data on which the Higg MS Index is based are partly outdated and unsuitable for comparisons. For this reason its use in communication to consumers is considered misleading and therefore, in Norway, illegal. The CA therefore asked Norrøna to remove or modify the commercialization of environmental benefits based on the Higg MS index.

“We do not want in any way to mislead consumers, but on the contrary to ensure the best possible information on the products that can be purchased“, is the response of Norrøna’s marketing director, Martin Lien, in an email to NRK. The Norwegian brand acknowledges that the information on cotton production is not perfect, based on generalized figures, but according to them it is the best data available at the moment. However, the communication will change following the CA’s recall.

The warning to H&M

H&M has also adopted and plans to use data from the Higg MS Index to communicate the environmental benefits of its products to consumers. The warning from the CA reached the Swedish giant, giving time until 1 September 2022 to adapt the commercial communication.

H&M had already been taken up by the Norwegian Authority in 2019. The use of the term “sustainable” in the promotion of the Conscious collection, without sufficient data to demonstrate, triggered the intervention of the CA to avoid greenwashing.

The Higg MS index

It is a tool developed by the textile industry, by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, to provide a standardized measurement of the environmental impacts of different types of fabrics in apparel manufacturing.

According to the CA, the index “measures” only the environmental impact of fabrics up to the production of the fabric itself, therefore not the entire environmental impact of a finished garment that we buy in the store. The “measurement” is based on average data for the environmental impact of the various types of fabrics that have been purchased from different regions and countries around the world.

The letter sent by the Norwegian Authority urges SAC to avoid using the tool for commercial communication of environmental benefits for consumers.

More marketing surveillance

It is not the first time that the CA has intervened to stop greenwashing. Also in other countries it is desirable to have such a diligent control system increasingly active, in defense of consumers who have neither the way nor the technical knowledge to independently verify the veracity of the claims on the environmental impact of the products.

There are more and more indices, rankings and certifications in the field of sustainability, cited by companies in marketing campaigns to promote their products as “green”. We need evidence to support the claims made by producers, and authorities to supervise the use of greenwashing. It is the road to sustainability that is not a facade, but applied with professionalism by companies, to truly contribute to the fight against climate change rather than to profit growth.

The brand will give the opportunity to clients to go to their Stockholm shop where they will be able to return their undesired clothes, which will then be sanitised and put inside a new machine called Looop. The machine will disassemble the fibres that will be reutilized to create new clothing items. H&M stated for CNN that these recycling process, developed together with the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA) and spinner company Novetex Textiles, can work with multiple items at the same time, it will not use water nor chemical products, and it will seldomly need the addition of raw materials of “sustainable origin”, however they hope to keep such additions to a minimum.

A technology that seems innovative and with a lot of potential, but we decided to delve deeper into this story with Ariele Elia, Assistant Director at Fashion Law Institute of Fordham Law University and member of the Fashion Studies Alliance.

“The biggest issue is that you can’t recycle all garments and there is not a system that can separate a lot of fabric blends. like a polyester or synthetic material”, says Ariele. “What happens with a lot of those plastics is when you’re starting to shred them it actually melts the fibre, so if they’re talking about recycling wool fibres and cotton fibres that’s fine but what most of the things that H&M actually produces it’s usually blended with some kind of stretch in it. It’s great for 100% wool sweater that can be recycled but if it has any kind of stretch or synthetic in it you probably can’t recycle it”.

Besides the 5 hours needed to complete the transformation, the clients will be able to observe the full process of it thanks to the fact that the machine Looop is in full display in the store surrounded by transparent glass.
At a price ranging from 11 to 16 dollars the clients can also choose between turning their old garments into either a scarf, a baby blanket or a sweater.

H&M stated that the proceeds will be invested in the research and innovation to help the brand reach their goal of having 100% recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030.

Due to the reputation of the Swedish brand and especially due to their fast fashion business model that is by now rooted in their company for many years now, we take such claim with much caution, as suggested also by Ariele:

“They are making some change and I think it is admirable that they’re trying to come up with this recycling system and I think that the money they’re putting into the technology is great. However, I always come back to the fact that with fast fashion the fact that you are mass producing that much is not sustainable. Despite all of the different initiatives and conscious fact that the machine Looop is in full display surrounded by transparent glass in brands or conscious collections that you create you still can’t be sustainable”.

We have also involved Sarah Byrd, fashion historian, archivist, and member of Fashion United Alliance. Sarah suggests a different perspective on this new machine and brand’s objective. She highlighted the fact that every clothing item will only be able to be recycled into a scarf, baby blanket or sweater.

“For what is worth, I don’t think producing new anything is ever truly sustainable and this seems like more downcycling (ndr: that reuses a material creating a product with a lower value than the original) than recycling. Buying less and taking care of what you have already is one of the most realistic steps people can take towards sustainability”, says Sarah.

To this, Ariele Elia added that besides producing new clothing items, the issue of quality also needs to be considered:

“What a lot of people don’t recognise is that when you recycle fibres, they are not virgin anymore, so the quality of it is very inferior and I think people expect whatever you put out to be exactly what you’re going to get back”.

Besides offering this alternative option, the Swedish brand has said that allowing customers to visualize and witness this closed loop approach to recycling will encourage more people to think about the actual value of what they wear.

For now this machine is only available in their Stockholm store and it isn’t clear whether the multinational brand has an expansion plan.

In conclusion, this new machine created by H&M in trying to find new sustainable solutions is certainly noteworthy. If they decide to license out the system to other brands, this technology would then be able to be replicated on a larger scale. Moreover, the energy and economical resources invested in Looop, that would consequentially have a big impact on the fashion world, is undoubtedly admirable.

To truly assess the value of this new technology we will need to check on it both in the short and long-term.

Nevertheless, the business model and low-cost production the company is deeply rooted to is not sustainable. And regardless of how many initiatives or conscious collections they make, they will never be able to undo or redeem themselves from the damages made by their mass production.

The fast recycling of an increasingly rapid fashion (and consumption) is not THE solution to the negative impact of the production and consumption system in the sector.

We at Dress Ecode will keep following the developments on this new machine and will keep you informed on other H&M’s actions.

Riccardo Zazzini

Photos: Fernand De Canne, Ksenia Chernaya.

Watch the video here