How do you know if you’re a victim of Greenwashing? - Greenwash has the answer

It might look like the fashion scene is actually changing and the pressure on planet earth from the industry is being reduced. Words like conscious, ethical, hand-made, recycled and so on is more or less used a little bit everywhere. One might think that the company is actually offering a better chice. But better in this case might only be very marginal. The team behind Greenwash wanted to do something about it, so they have created a virtual washing machine where you can learn more about certain labels and read about examples from brands on how they are being used. Two of these examples comes from H&M that are selling conscious pants made of recycled materials, but the virtual result will show you that the recycled material is not all the material, it is pants made of mixed materials making it hard to re-cycle them and therefore not fully circular. The other example refers to the reuse, reduce and recycle campaign where consumers are encourage to hand in their old clothes. This is miss-leading though consumers tend to think that old clothes became new clothes in the H&M clothing factory. Which is not the case at all, currently only 0.1 % of all the global textiles are made from recycled textiles and the clothes H&M collect goes to a third partner, probably selling them on the second hand market or might use the old textile material as isolation materials for the car-industry or maybe something else? Well, they do not end up in Bangladesh or Vietnam as new textile materials, on that we’re certain.

You can also wash other brands and see how well they are doing. We checked out Adidas Stan Smith shoes and learned that they are not 50% made of recycled material as claimed since they can’t prove this is actually the case!

To know what is right and wrong and how to make a good choice has never been more difficult. Greenwash helps you to at least to understand what the big brands actually means when they claim something to be gren or sustainable. We are excited to follow what Greenwash will do next, until then, check the platform out, wash a brand and share it with your friends. That is how we create awareness.