Why Comedians Are Getting Serious about Greenwashing

In the era of fast fashion, large clothing brands have found it advantageous to advertise their concern for the environment as a sales tactic. This has led to massive gray areas for companies pretending to be environmentally friendly while contributing to the fashion factors contributing to the impending climate crisis.

Environmentalist Jay Westerveld coined the term “Greenwashing” to describe the performative sustainability that was drawing the attention of consumers around the world into a scam. In 1986, while on a trip to Fiji, Westerveld described the hypocrisy of large resorts and corporations pretending to be environmentally friendly by portraying eco-credentials while doing nothing to stop the climate crisis.

Comedian Hasan Minhajdrew attention to the issue by calling out greenwashing by calling out large corporations on his hit Netflix show, The Patriot Act. He pointed out that vague terms like “sustainably-produced polyurethane” or “ethically sourced cotton” gave no actual description of the impact of these materials on the environment or the conditions under which they were produced.

As much as producers look to make a more sustainable future, the style editor of the Financial Times remarked that with green marketing, “sustainable fashion? There’s no such thing”.

Is that the case? Certainly there are steps to become more sustainable. An adjacent term to sustainability has been the design of eco-fashion. The eco-fashion producers focus on reducing the impact of interactions between the production of clothing and the environment. They often focus on the health of their consumers and the conditions under which their workers create. But in terms of sustainability, anything has to be better than nothing.

Greenwashing, however, is pushing the environmentalism movement backward. “Statistically, green sells. According to a 2015 Nielson poll, 66% of people are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products and 50% of purchasing decisions are influenced by sustainability features. By superficially appealing to green demands, businesses retain most environmentally conscious consumers without actually changing unsustainable businesspractices.”

Consumers are not at all blind. In the UK, onlyone fifth of consumerstrust the sustainability claims of brands. Eighty-three percent of that same population, however, said that they would be more likely to trust the sustainability of the same products if they had been vetted and approved by a third party. So why not establish sustainability as a basic function of clothing sales?

Companies like Compare Ethics already exist. In the UK alone, the ethical sustainability market makes up an 82 billion pound industry. CEO of Compare Ethics, Abbie Morris said that the “gamble of greenwashing does not pay off”. Especially as consumers become better informed, the consumer choice that drives the markets will point to greater sustainability. However, in order to allow the economy to settle upon sustainability, brands must start giving consumers the real facts without term modifiers.

The problem becomes a challenge for consumers and producers alike. As buyers with dollar votes, calling for sales with product information and transparency is only half the battle. On the flip side, corporations must begin to understand consumers and their desires. Simply saying that things are environmentally friendly will stop working. Consumers must start calling for evidence of the change advertised by their favorite brands. Change starts with looking more deeply into where your “ethically sourced cotton” comes from, and asking the questions of where that supply chain will lead you. Only then can we push for a system that doesn’t need to preach sustainability but rather does something about it.