Workers hold a tribunal on working conditions, which H&M refuses to attend. 2011: hundreds of garment workers pass out at a Cambodian supplier factory in one week due to poor ventilation and malnutrition.2010: 21 workers die and 50 are injured in a fire at H&M factory in Bangladesh.Here is a non-exhaustive list of their record on workers rights. Workers’ rightsĪccording to the Clean Clothes Campaign, 93% of brands don’t have evidence to prove they pay a living wage to their suppliers. So, let’s talk about all the ways H&M has tried to greenwash their lack of sustainability and ethics. Corporations can falsely promote themselves as sustainable, while still harming the environment and workers. What results is often selective and misleading pictures of what is being done and whether it’s effective.

They’re able to use vague wording, not include measurement criteria, and not explain how they’re defining sustainable and ethical practice. Brands have been able to set their own ‘sustainability’ initiatives, marketing campaigns and capsule collections. One of the main factors that leads to greenwashing is the lack of standardised, legally binding frameworks to govern how sustainability is defined and information that needs to be disclosed.

In 2021 the European Commission reported that national consumer protection authorities had reason to believe that in 42% of cases of companies making sustainability claims, the claims were exaggerated, false, or deceptive. The term was officially coined by Jay Westerveld in a literary magazine in 1986, though the practice continues today. Greenwashing is when a corporation markets itself to seem more environmentally conscious than it actually is: putting more effort into marketing to appear ‘green’ rather than actually attempting to reduce impact. I actually started writing this before their latest move with Maisie Williams ( which prompted this post), but now it seems even more apt to publish.

What I really want to focus on in a bit more detail is H&M’s consistent history of greenwashing. Honestly I could leave the blogpost there, but I won’t.

Old h and m ad